Weather Scientists

This year, Stoneham has adopted a new science curriculum and we're LOVING it in kindergarten!!!

We always begin learning about weather in kindergarten, but this year we've learned that some scientists love weather so much they made it their job! We know that a weather scientist is called a Meteorologist we can see them every day on the news with our families.

We've also started to learn about the different tools a meteorologist uses to do their job like thermometers, radar, anemometers, and rain gauges.

An Anemometer measures the wind.

What Does a Thermometer measure? 

As we began our learning, one of the essential questions I asked was "what does a thermometer measure?" I haven't given the student's the answer yet, we're going to explore the weather and weather measurement tools together over the next few weeks and learn together what a thermometer really does! Some ideas were the heat, the cold, the weather, how hot you are....great ideas!

This week, we read a story about Ravi and the weather he experienced throughout his day. It was rainy and windy in the morning on his walk to school and by the afternoon, it was sunny and he could have his soccer game! On his way home from soccer, he and his family saw a rainbow on their walk home.

Rainbows peaked the student's interests and we watched the below video on how a rainbow is made and had a HUGE conversation on what a prism is and how it "breaks" the white light from the sun apart.

We found a fun video to help explain the how and why of rainbows!

The kids were still a bit confused about white light and how it "broke" apart, so I made a 3-D prism with our magnatiles, stuck it on the board, and showed them a little closer how the prism breaks apart the light into the ROYGBIV colors of the rainbow!

Here is our finished rainbow/prism/white light conversation drawing!

And...a close up!

I cannot WAIT to continue our science learning this year.