Recently we have been focusing on weather at our house. Since out goal, in both science and history has been to start at the very beginning (insert music notes merrily across the top of the previous words), we began with the big bang. We then moved on to the sun and seasons, the differences in Northern and Southern hemispheres and, since we were in the neighborhood, a discussion of day and night.
Our school globe, a dark room and a flashlight turned out to be the perfect tools to show how the sun hits the earth at different times of the day and during different seasons. Kids can’t resist dark rooms and flashlights now, can they? By actually “tilting’ one of our crew, and having another one hold the flashlight, we were able to emphasize the impact that the earth’s tilt has on the seasons. This of course, elicited giggles from all assembled.
However, after this auspicious start, we’ve started to stumble. September through December should be one of the best times to teach weather, with the variety of it we see at that time of year…unless you live in Southern California. I like to say we have climate here but, no weather - a bit of an exaggeration perhaps but, then I grew up in a place were we had WEATHER, lots of it!
And, I’ve been rather surprised by the variety of things that are, umm abstract in this climate.
Let’s take clouds. There are basically three types, right? Well, we don’t tend to have many clouds here and we certainly have very few, cumulous, since we have such low humidity. Speaking of which…it’s a bit hard to describe humidity, when the children have never felt it. Let’s not even talk about the heat index. I made an attempt to explain this, how it “feels” hotter when it’s more humid. Guess we’ll have to wait for a trip to Florida. And then we have barometers and also thermometers, neither of which show a great variance over the course of a week or a month for that matter.
Since we live by the coast, this is of course exacerbated. We did learn though that it’s because water holds heat better than air our temperature stays more nearly the same day and night. Since they’ve all traveled one hour inland to the desert, this concept was not met with blank stares.
We’ve done the best that we can with the climate we have been dealt. We’ve put out slim glass jars to measure rain. Slim jars, since we get so little rain, we can record bigger numbers. We put up a thermometer and a wind vane. We’re tackling the weather, such as it is. We will however, have to come back to this throughout the years as we travel to different places...unless you all have any ideas?
Next up is earthquakes…now that’s something to which they can relate!
Bookmark this post:
Our school globe, a dark room and a flashlight turned out to be the perfect tools to show how the sun hits the earth at different times of the day and during different seasons. Kids can’t resist dark rooms and flashlights now, can they? By actually “tilting’ one of our crew, and having another one hold the flashlight, we were able to emphasize the impact that the earth’s tilt has on the seasons. This of course, elicited giggles from all assembled.
However, after this auspicious start, we’ve started to stumble. September through December should be one of the best times to teach weather, with the variety of it we see at that time of year…unless you live in Southern California. I like to say we have climate here but, no weather - a bit of an exaggeration perhaps but, then I grew up in a place were we had WEATHER, lots of it!
And, I’ve been rather surprised by the variety of things that are, umm abstract in this climate.
Let’s take clouds. There are basically three types, right? Well, we don’t tend to have many clouds here and we certainly have very few, cumulous, since we have such low humidity. Speaking of which…it’s a bit hard to describe humidity, when the children have never felt it. Let’s not even talk about the heat index. I made an attempt to explain this, how it “feels” hotter when it’s more humid. Guess we’ll have to wait for a trip to Florida. And then we have barometers and also thermometers, neither of which show a great variance over the course of a week or a month for that matter.
Since we live by the coast, this is of course exacerbated. We did learn though that it’s because water holds heat better than air our temperature stays more nearly the same day and night. Since they’ve all traveled one hour inland to the desert, this concept was not met with blank stares.
We’ve done the best that we can with the climate we have been dealt. We’ve put out slim glass jars to measure rain. Slim jars, since we get so little rain, we can record bigger numbers. We put up a thermometer and a wind vane. We’re tackling the weather, such as it is. We will however, have to come back to this throughout the years as we travel to different places...unless you all have any ideas?
Next up is earthquakes…now that’s something to which they can relate!
Bookmark this post:
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