It's Raining Cats and Dogs! A Weather Thematic Unit Grades 1-3 

Have you started to think about what you'll be teaching in the fall for science? If you love teaching thematic units cross curricular, check out this weather unit!  I LOVE teaching my students about weather and meteorologists. There are so many awesome skills that the students can learn. This unit includes 20 days of lesson plans with mentor texts, vocabulary cards for different types of weather, (weather tools and clouds), anchor charts, scientist/meteorologist expository writing, a weather investigation journal, weather experiments, weather poetry, craftivities and a class book about clouds. Each component is fun and engaging for the students! I hope you enjoy it!

Weather Packet Cover Page

I've written 20 days of lesson plans for this unit and they all include mentor texts, materials, directions and examples.

Weather Lesson Plan Examples

I use vocabulary cards and anchor charts with every unit. These are excellent visuals for the students to understand the skills and concepts that you are teaching them. You can also display them around the classroom for a resource later on. Here are my examples of anchor charts and vocabulary cards:

Weather Anchor Charts

Just in case your wondering, I use the cause and effect anchor chart with the book Thunder Cake, and the sequence of events anchor chart with the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
Here are my vocabulary cards: 

Weather Tools Vocabulary Cards
and
Types of Weather and Clouds

Also included in this unit are craftivities. Ya'll remember how I LOVE to include craftivities within my units? They are engaging, fun and allow for imagination and creativity. Here are some examples of some of my craftivities from this unit. Most of these I like to hang in the classroom or out in the hallway. 

Craftivities for Weather Unit

The students can make a pinwheel when they learn about what makes the wind, two different kinds of rainbow craftivities when learning how a rainbow is made, and reading and writing about meteorologists and what their job is.

You can't have a unit without interactive notebooks! Here are some examples of some interactive notebook activities for science. All you need to do is copy and shrink these down so they'll fit inside the notebooks. Usually these follow a science experiment, poetry, or reading activity.

Interactive Notebook Activities

For Poetry Notebooks, the students have two poems they can illustrate, cut out and glue into their notebook. I usually have the students highlight either nouns, verbs, or adjectives in the poem, depending on what skill we are studying for that week. I also have them write a caption at the bottom of their picture describing what they illustrated.  Here are my poetry notebooks: 

Focus Poetry Notebooks

For the science experiments, there is a rainbow experiment using a prism and an overhead projector. A cloud in a cup using a plastic cup, water, shaving cream and blue food coloring. And a tornado in a jar using a marble, water, dish soap and red food coloring. All of these are also interactive notebook activities after the students conduct the experiment.  I typed out the lesson plan with materials, directions and a photo of the experiment for better understanding. Here are the examples:

Cloud in a Cup

Tornado in a Jar 

Cloud in a Cup and Tornado in a Jar Experiments 

When investigating weather, the students can also use a weather  journal. You could have the students look out the window daily, or take a walking field trip outside your school to observe the weather. I like to hang a rain gauge and a thermometer outside my window so the students can look at it easiest from inside the classroom. The weather journal is for 10 days and includes a cover page, daily weather recording, weather graph, problem solving and recording the students' favorite weather at the end of the packet. Here are some of the pages of the student journal:

Student Weather Journal
Click Here for my Weather Journal:

My Weather Journal Grades K-2

If you are interested in checking out my Weather Thematic Unit for Grades 1-3, click below. I hope you got inspired to try some weather in your classroom for the fall or spring. No matter what time of year you decide to teach this unit, your students will LOVE it!

It's Raining Cats and Dogs! A Weather Thematic Unit Grades 1-3

Love, Kara
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