This week our reading story was
Super Storms by Seymour Simon. I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching about weather. It is my absolute favorite! The kids loving seeing the YouTube videos about tornados, hurricanes, and blizzards that I pull up. This year, since we were supposed to have a stormy week, I laid off the videos because I didn't want to scare my kiddos. The one thing each of theses storms have in common is the wind. For our science activity this week, the students made weather vanes!
The materials were things I just randomly had in my classroom! This was fun and easy for the kids to make. To make the weather vane you would need:
-paper plates
-clay
-straws
-tissue paper(cut up into strips)
-tape
The first step is to label your paper plate. The best way to do this is to tell students which direction is North and to start there. I told my students about the saying, " Never Eat Soggy Waffles". They were amazed with my cleverness until I told them that my teachers had taught me that, and I didn't make it up on my own! ha!
Then I passed around a pinch of clay for students to roll in a ball, then flatten out a little. This is to hold the straw.
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Kids at my school are HUGE Duck Dynasty fans;) |
Then comes the tough part. I didn't even show the kids how to do it. They had the piece of tissue paper and I gave them a loooonnnng piece of tape. Their task was to find the way to tape the tissue paper to the straw. Some of them were getting a little frustrated but after looking at other successful ones, they all got it!
Some were did a good job hiding the tape, some were not. They all were just perfect though!
Then the next step was to test them out!
It was a rainy day so we stayed under the awning. The kids loved seeing which way their tissue paper was blowing.
The kids got to take their weather vanes home. In the car line, my end of the day duty, I noticed one weather vane was starting to have a rough life..
Oh my Miss S. She is something else!