Weather Books, Activities and Free Printable Weather Chart

Weather Books for Kids

On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World’s Weather On one day in March you get views of different areas of the world to see what the weather is. Interesting and enjoyable with short poems telling the story of weather around the world.

We really like Gail Gibbons. Weather Forecasting is an older book but what I like about it is that it does a great job of explaining the basics of a weather station. Her Weather Words and What They Mean is a good book for young readers and will introduce them to a lot of weather words.

On the Same Day in MarchWeather ForecastingWeather Words & What They Mean

Here is a title that will appeal to older boys: National Geographic Kids Everything Weather: Facts, Photos, and Fun that Will Blow You Away. Long title, eh? It has a lot of great pictures, tidbits and solid info as well.  There is information about weather being destructive and even deadly so I would suggest you keep that in mind if you have a sensitive child.

Alphabet books are favorites in our house so we were excited to find one on weather. W is for Wind: A Weather Alphabet is a rhyming book with great illustrations and factual information.

We have had this book since my son was little and pull it out every now and then to read it again. The Cloud Book by Tomie de Paola is a classic weather book.

Everything WeatherA Weather Alphabet The Cloud Book

And for a bit of a change of pace . . . Blue on Blue. I am in love with the illustrations made from scratchboard and watercolor and the poetic telling of a thunderstorm coming over a small farm. Beautiful book!

Weather Activities

DK Eyewitness Books: Weather

The book we chose as the main book we worked from was DK Eyewitness Books: Weather.

It includes a lot of information about weather in a great format, as well as some fun weather activities.

We love the DK Eyewitness series of books and they are one of the publishers that I really like when choosing non-fiction books for boys.

They are great for visual spatial learners as they have a lot of wonderful photographs and the info is in bite sized pieces, yet they cover a lot of material.

Picture the Weather Activity

Record a day of weather with your camera. Simply take photographs of the same spot outside at different times of day. You can use this in combination with the weather chart below or on its own.

You can get nice results if you know a storm is coming through your area. We were suppose to get snow yesterday as well as rain but we ended up with just rain.  The pictures would have been more exciting with snow–ah well, can’t control the weather!

We used a digital camera and took images throughout the day. We then put a few of the pictures into one image.  This is a very enjoyable way to track weather in your area.  

A note on cameras: I believe in giving children real tools to work with. They get better results and they teach kids to be responsible. 

Chart the Weather Activity

Use a weather chart to record the weather. Kids are often fascinated by weather.

We live in the midwest where we can get sun, rain, sleet, and snow all within a few hours of each other!

Charting it allows for increased attention to details as you are observing with a purpose.

We made a free printable weather chart so you can track the weather for two weeks.

• Record the high and low temperatures for the day.
• Check the wind direction (you can use a compass) and the wind speed (make an anemometer.)
• What is the cloud cover like? Use partly cloudy for some clouds, half cloudy if about 1/2 of the sky is covered, mostly cloudy if the sky is almost full of clouds, or all for complete cloud cover.
• The “other observations” box can be used to mention things like sunny, lightening, hazy, foggy, etc.

Free Printable Weather Chart <——— Click link, or image above, to print your free weather chart.

You can even use this nifty weather symbols chart from the National Weather Service.  I had no idea there were 99 different symbols to designate different weather patterns.  Very interesting!

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