units for kids Archives

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:

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. 🙂