Springtime is an excellent season to talk about weather. Spring pretty much has it all: cold weather in the beginning, windy days, thunderstorms, light drizzles, rainbows, sunshine, and (down here in the South) high temperatures!
Since one of our family movie night features last year was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, we made it into a weather unit featuring the story and weather activities! Check out our Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs unit study – one of our fun homeschool unit studies!
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Unit Study
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Of course, we started by reading the story Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett.
As you probably know, the book features a tall tale told by a grandpa about a town called Chewandswallow – where food literally rained down from the sky. At first, everything was nice and predictable, but something awful happened and the town became deluged with food that drowned, crushed, and ruined everything. People had to escape on stale pieces of bread. It was pretty rough. 🙂
Since the book centers on the concept of weather, we decided to start our unit with some simple weather charting. I got this simple weather observation chart from the Notebooking Nook. (It’s free!)
On the chart, you can note the forecast for each day of the upcoming week.
Then you do a comparison to see if the actual weather is close to the forecast.
Ours ended up being pretty close. What I really like about this chart is that you can use actual temperature readings, weather words, or just let the kids draw pictures. It’s easy to adapt it for everyone’s level.
We also started talking about some common weather phenomena. These resources are super handy:
- What is a tornado?
- What is a hurricane?
- What is a flash flood?
- How do weather forecasters predict the weather?
After our discussion about weather, we watched the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
And that sparked a lively discussion about how books often differ from their movie versions. The movie was wayyyy different, but still good. Plus, it featured a wonderful message for young girls to be comfortable with themselves, even if they’re “nerdy”. I loved it.
Of course, you can always make spaghetti and meatballs with your kids. 🙂
For more weather learning fun, check out these weather lessons for kids!
And to learn more about what makes up a town, grab our Spanish community word flashcards!
Don’t miss all of our other unit study resources on Pinterest!
Get more ideas for learning about weather from these great bloggers!
DIY Weather Binoculars – Adventures of Adam
Books about Weather for Kids – Craft Create Calm
Cloud Formations Tracking Log – Teach Beside Me
Free Weather Chart – Kiddy Charts
Traveling to Countries with Tropical Weather with a Toddler – Maria Magdalena Living Ideas
This post is part of the Movie and a Big Idea linkup from iHomeschool Network! Click over to read more movie-themed activities for kids!
Tried to download the unit study and the link took me to Amazon to purchase the book. This is one of my grandson’s favorites and I was thrilled to find this as a way to study weather!
Hi! This is a collection of resources, not a printable thematic unit. So the links you see are directing you to the resources we used. I just put them all together in one spot for the convenience of my readers. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by!