Weather: Children’s Thoughts, Theories and Observations
By Nancy Howe, Head Teacher
Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not
Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot
We’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.
At Bing we don’t weather the weather, we welcome it. The natural world is a valued and essential part of our curriculum and the doors to outside are always open. Our half-acre play yards were designed to directly engage children with nature. Large windows give children the opportunity to be aware of the outdoors even on rainy days. We encourage children to wear boots and rain gear so they can really experience the rain, feeling it fall onto their cheeks or stepping in puddles.
Young children are very interested in the weather: why the sun shines, what clouds are made of and where rain comes from. They are especially sensitive to their area’s unique weather. In Florida, children are aware of hurricanes, while in Kansas they know about tornadoes. In the Northeast, children understand the dramatic changing of the seasons while children in Northern California know about earthquakes and rain.
This was a particularly rainy year in Northern California. One cloudy day in early fall, Luke came to school and wanted to know how he could find out if it was going to rain on Saturday. He knew that an outdoor event he was looking forward to going to would be canceled if it rained. We proposed searching the National Weather Service on the internet to find the forecast for the week. We did that together and printed out the results. He checked the printout every day. Other children became interested and a project on weather began. We were surprised that most of the children had very definite thoughts about the weather and had developed complex theories to help them understand natural phenomena. Teachers listened, without correcting, as children enthusiastically shared their thoughts, theories, opinions and misconceptions. We proposed questions and the children responded. We recorded their ideas and collected their drawings and paintings. Their theories led to questions of their own. What follows is a window into children’s thinking and reveals their unique perspectives on weather.
Clouds
ANNA: Clouds live up in the sky. They just stay up there. Sometimes the sun gets covered with them and sometimes it’s sunny without clouds.
CLARKE: The sun goes behind the cloud and then it gets cloudy.
NICOLE: There was a cloud and then there was rain. The clouds made the sun hide.
JAKE: Clouds are different shapes. Clouds are up in the air. Every time I drive they follow me.
JACK: Water makes the clouds. Clouds are just big bunches of water in the sky. Some days the cloud drops down… little tiny pieces drop down so it’s raining.
ABBY: If there’s no clouds, someone wouldn’t know there’s clouds. There would just be blue.
Rain
JONATHAN: When it rains, the clouds have electricity inside and then there’s a thunderstorm. When it rains really hard, the rain turns to snow.
BRENDAN: Rain clouds … rain rain rain rain rain.
RENEE: It doesn’t rain at night, it only storms.
COLE: The water evaporates into the clouds and then it rains again. My grandma told me that.
LAUREN: When the sun comes up, it’s going to dry up all the rain.
Sun
AYLA: The sun shines from the sky. God made the sun with circles and lines.
THALIA: The sun comes in the daytime. It goes away from the moon. When the sun goes down it’s dark.
ELEANOR: The sun comes up and burns the rain because it’s hot.
ARTEM: The sun is out and dries up the rain. The rain’s gone. No more rain.
TAYLOR: My favorite weather is sunshine.
LUKE: Halfly sunny is the same as halfly cloudy!
Rainbows
STEPHANIE: If it suns and rains at the same time, then a rainbow will come.
MELINA: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple are the colors of the rainbow.
LAUREN: One day when I was driving on the highway, I saw a big, big rainbow. It stared at me so much and I hid in my house and the rainbow couldn’t see me.
RISHI: I saw a rainbow in Seattle. It was red, pink, and orange.
DREW: When the rain stops, there’s a big rainbow.
SEBASTIAN: Some people think the rainbow is held up by two clouds, but actually it comes from a faraway land. People think it’s a bridge but you can’t go over it because it’s from sunshine. Then the wind blows the rainbow to other countries.
The Weatherman
TEACHER: How does the weatherman know what the weather will be?
LUKE: The weatherman has a telescope. He looks far and sees if it’s going to rain. He looks for the things that make a word. The word in the sky tells us if it will rain or not. I thought the word comes from the lightning, but I don’t know. The word stays behind the sun so no one knows, only the weatherman.
MARK: The weatherman has a telescope and sees a circle that goes around and it has a button. There are a lot of circles and they are from the sky and they drop down. They are the raindrops.
Not all investigations lead to in-depth projects, nor are children’s theories and misconceptions always open to interpretation or correction. For this investigation of the weather, teachers chose to emphasize a particular phase of inquiry: posing questions, thinking, observing and theorizing.
The role of the teachers as co-collaborators in the investigation of weather was to propose questions that encouraged children to expand their thinking, to gather the children’s images, thoughts and theories and ultimately to share the children’s collective knowledge using a variety of media including classroom newsletter, educationally interpretive display board, notebook binder and three-paneled brochure.
We have included some of the resources and internet links that complemented and enhanced the investigation. Books about the Weather: Weather, Brian Cosgrove; What is the Sun? Reeve Lindbergh; The Cloud Book, Tomie De Paola; The Reasons for Seasons, Gail Gibbons; Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain,Verna Aardema; Umbrella, Taro Yashima; Little Cloud, Eric Carle; Gilberto and the Wind, Marie Hall Ets.
Links
weather.yahoo.com