Home School - Weather

Now those who have followed my Home Schooling throughout the year you know I am always keen to layer my subjects; I once taught Maths through Cooking, something that I have continued to do.

I use most of the guided curriculum topics suggested by Education policy and schemes this term however there were two topics for Geography; we had Maps for the first half and Weather for the second half.

This always frustrated me as a teach as I always wanted to extend certain lessons for longer but felt forced to weekly guidelines. With those restrictions taken away in Home School I though that it made sense to layer the two subjects.

Using the Map that we created I thought it would be good to look at different types of weather and present it on the map. This, in theory, will also reinforce the variety of locations that we learn about by using the term "It is *insert weather* in *insert location*"

Now, like most of my 'good' ideas, I have no idea if this will work.

Now we knew that this meant another afternoon of art and craft so instead of us sitting and doing this at home we thought we would go and visit the lovely ladies over at Re-Creation.

(If you haven't seen my previous post about this lovely little corner in London then please click on the link here)

The Plan then is to make and design different types of weather. In conversation on the way there we identified:

Clouds

Rain Clouds

Lightning

Sun

Hail

So we got there and got making; with the assistance of the lovely Krissi.

We started off with Sun's.

We started off cutting out circles and then using the remaining card made a variety of triangle shapes and sizes. We stuck the triangles to one side of the circle to make the rays of the sun and then backed it with another circle.

Whilst James and I finished off making the Sun's William and Krissi started making clouds.

Creating circles on grey card Krissi then drew clouds around the circles so they were the same size as the Sun.

William then put P.V.A glue on to the card and stuck wool on to the cloud.

He decided that these clouds would be ideal to co-use as clouds and hail; they chose white beads for hail stones.

 

Through conversation, between us all, we decided that we could attach the different weather icons using Velcro so Krissi, kindly, used hot glue to stick the pieces together.

(We explained to both boys that the glue was hot and that adults only should do this through safety)

In the meantime James and I started making our rain clouds. We used the same technique or creating clouds as William and Krissi did; this time we used purple card.

I then drew tear shaped drops on blue card and cut these out. James counted out 3 drops and then stuck these to the clouds; using a grey strip we extended the rain drops. We backed the cloud with another like we did with the Sun.

Using a gold, sparkling, pipe cleaner we were able to make small 'Z' shaped that inserted into the bottom of the rain cloud.

Through conversation between William, James and Krissi about how the golden pipe cleaner, resting upon James' head, looked like Bee antennae that it lead to the idea of having a pollen count and with that William and Krissi made tiny bees.

Obviously the day of crafting and Home School took it's toll on William.

Now today, Friday, is the start of something interesting; I say hopefully!

Now for the next week William, and hopefully James, will be presenting the weather every morning on Instagram.

To start with the boys will just start telling you the different weather that you are expected on that day. It is my hope that the combination of the locations now placed on the map will be incorporated within the forecast that is mentioned at the top.

So please join us on Instagram and follow our layered Home School topic.

You can find me as @mr_kitney or just click on this link