Weather Unit (with a FREEBIE)

We have been learning about weather for what seems like forever! It has been a fun unit and the kiddos have really enjoyed it. I had a great time teaching it because it is easy to incorporate across subject areas and EVERY student has background knowledge on it!  Here is an overview of our unit:

We started the first day just talking about the different types of weather. I made this anchor chart to help us remember the types of weather.

We also did the sheet below. You can get for free in my Weather Freebies on TpT. There are two differentiated versions included.

(I love this student's "windy" illustration!)

After the brief weather intro, we spend a couple of days talking about each type of weather. I usually started each day's discussion with a short video to get the kids thinking about the type of weather we were going to discuss for the day.

Here are the videos that I used (There are some great Sid the Science Kid videos.):

Cloud video        Wind video        Rain video        Storm video     

(Some of the ones I used are already removed from youtube--boo!)

After the intro and video, we read a book about the type of weather we are discussing. Then we add the important words to an anchor chart so that the kids can use them later in their writing. Here are the books I used to discuss each type of weather:

                                      

                                                         

                                        

Here is a picture of our stormy weather anchor chart. The kids supply all of the words that are under each type of storm.

After the anchor chart, the kids write about the type of weather. I have three differentiated levels for this. Level 1 draws and labels a picture, level 2 draws a picture and finishes a sentence starter, and level 3 draws a picture and writes a couple of sentences about it. (There are some examples later in this post.)

We did this for each type of weather.

Then we moved on to how weather affects us.

Please don't judge my not so cute anchor chart. Hey, they can't all be "pinterest-worthy"!

Here are some examples of the differentiated writing activities. We did this for each type of weather as well as how weather affects us.

I found a couple of fabulous free readers that we read together and then added to our book bags. Click the picture to grab the free readers.

(This came from Greg at Kindergarten Smorgasboard.)

(This came from Brittany Melzer's TpT store.)

We also started using "spelling sentences" to practice our spelling words, sight words, reading skills, and review our science concepts for the week.

Here were our spelling sentences for "how weather affects us":

I got the sentence strips here. Love them!

At the end of the week, I print the sentences with the word order mixed up on paper that matches the sentence strip (this makes it easy for kinders to keep straight). The kids cut and glue them in the correct order.

Thanks for sticking around to read this long post! click the picture above to grab your FREEBIE! You will get the writing pages and spelling sentences for the "how weather affects me" lesson. Enjoy!