Be Responsible to Your Kids
Kids are naturally very curious about life as they begin to grow and develop. As responsible adults, we look at our grandkids or our children as little undeveloped sponges.
Their minds are fresh and just waiting to soak up all of the new things around them.
It would be good to teach them about what they live with every day, the weather.
So whether you at home are involved in sharing and teaching about the daily climate changes that will affect their lives that is up to you.
However, you may find that the school your child attends may not adequately teach the lessons of daily weather that will be most important to you and your family.
Please let me share some thoughts concerning weather information for kids and why and maybe some hows on accomplishing this objective.
Technology Helps Make Weather Information for Kids Easier
Technology drives science by making it easier to discover new things while science, in turn, drives technology to invent new tools for the purpose of scientific discovery.
When children of all ages use kids’ weather stations, it gives them the opportunity to learn these things firsthand.
There are pros and cons to both buying and making the tools for the kid’s weather stations. While purchased tools will provide qualitative data that homemade instruments simply cannot, homemade tools provide hands-on experience as to how the tools truly work, from the ground up.
Luckily, kids’ weather stations can actually be made relatively easy by you are your kids or students. But should there be no time for that, a weather station in totality can be purchased either online or at retail outlets.
You may take a look at a student weather station by going to Amazon to see it and what it is all about.
Features of Some of the Best Weather Stations for Kids
The best weather station for kids will feature these standard tools: a thermometer to measure temperature, a rain gauge to measure precipitation, a wind vane to measure wind direction, an anemometer to measure wind speed, a barometer to measure air pressure, and a hygrometer to measure humidity.
All of these tools are vastly important to put together a properly functioning weather station for children. A reference chart for clouds may also want to be purchased to study cloud coverage.
Cloud coverage is determined and recorded as the percentage of the sky being covered by clouds.
To properly house the weather station, try to place it in a louvered shed as this will allow for maximum air circulation. Thermometers should never be placed in direct sunlight as this can artificially alter the true temperature.
While barometers can be kept inside, all of the other tools should be stored outdoors.
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TREND enterprises, Inc. What’s the Weather? Bulletin Board Set
Types of Clouds ChartClouds Laminated Educational Weather Classroom Chart Poster 24×36
This is another great learning opportunity for children as they learn how to properly care for and store the tools which make up the kid’s weather stations.
School Time With Weather Stations
By making a weather station for children as a school-time activity, teachers can strengthen and foster their curiosity about not only the weather but the whole world around them.
There is also the added benefit of such structured learning satisfying the recommended curriculum of the National Science Education Standards.
These standards state that schoolchildren from grades kindergarten through the 4th need to learn why and how scientists use tools for observations, investigations, and to take measurements.
Older school-age children need to learn how technology and science go hand in hand.
The Results After Constructing a Weather Station
After the children have assembled and used the weather station, they will have a strong desire to perform weather experiments for kids. These experiments can be relatively simple enough to perform, such as recreating the effects of a tornado.
A great recent example would be they could be taught about how tornadoes act and behave.
The same tornadoes are possible to be a large disruptive part of a major hurricane such as yesterday’s (September 10, 2017) Hurricane Irma landing and moving through the state of Florida.
This would be a great teaching example, as you can take real-live results, from Hurricane Irma, you could map out where tornadoes actually appeared and landed during Hurricane Irma.
Along with that then you could study weather readings by the professional weather people and then you could put these readings up against where the readings were and how long and where the tornadoes appeared and you could see the weather readings did affect the weather by forming the storms that did indeed happen. This is a great example of weather experiments for kids.
The Kids Results Provide Data
The kids can then share the data between themselves, between classes in the same school, and even compare data on how weather differs across the state or even the country.
There are many websites where real-time data can be collected and analyzed in the classroom environment.
After the activities are complete, teachers may want to test the knowledge of their students. This can be done by a variety of methods, including online testing, traditional pen, and paper tests, or by matching pictures, such as matching the names of tools with the correct picture and then writing down what their purpose is.
There is no doubt that kids’ weather stations are a great boon to the scientific knowledge that studying the weather can bring.
Not only are they recommended by professional educators and science organizations and government institutions, but parents the entire world over know the value of keeping their kids interested in the world around them.
Make the right choice for your students by taking the time to invest in their future by building, purchasing, or otherwise using a weather station that the kids can enjoy and learn from for many years to come.
A Great Beginner’s Student Weather Station
Learning Resources Weather Center
In looking for a recommended weather station that will work well for students I came across the Learning Resources Weather Center. This unit is solid and sturdy. It is able to take a licking and keep ticking as they say.
Children will find the station to include the best and most basic of weather tools. Included are instruments to measure barometric pressure, relative humidity, and air temperature.
Another area covered is to introduce kids to meteorology. This is a great way to introduce the study of weather and forecasting to young students.
It is in the shape of a carrying case. the three instruments are well protected and should not easily break from any mishandling. The instruments are deemed to be of good value and accurate rating.
