Our Nature Study from Harmony Fine Arts has challenged us to explore the weather, and I’ve had a lot of fun with books from our local library.
We learned the three parts of weather: temperature, wind, and water. I puzzled for awhile over the fact that I didn’t have an outdoor thermometer. Eventually, I just went to weather.com and checked our temperature. Then, I pulled my thermometer chart from A Beka Charts, added a construction paper ribbon for the “mercury,” adjusted the “mercury” to match the temperature from the Weather website, and had the kids read our make-shift thermometer—voila! We were in business.
The next day, we learned about rain. We learned that when warm moist air mixes with cool air, it makes rain or water that we can see in the air. (Water that we can only feel in the air is humidity, or “humility” as my son calls it.) So, to illustrate rain, I pulled out the faithful “condensation” experiment with a pan of ice water held over a pan of boiling water. The kids were duly impressed.
I love this age, where Mom and Dad are always the heros and everything looks like magic!
