Begin your weather unit on the first day of the month. This will make it easy to count the frequency of each type of weather in the month. Model for the students how to look out the window and decide whether the weather is sunny, cloudy, rainy or snowy. Choose an appropriate picture icon, and attach it with tape to the large, blank calendar. You can also make a reusable calendar by laminating the blank calendar and icons and attaching Velcro dots to both.
Record the temperature on the large calendar, using either an outdoor thermometer visible from the classroom window, a digital weather station or an Internet weather report for your zip code. A digital weather station displays the outside temperature, date and time on a small screen either through a temperature probe on a wire or a wireless sensor placed outside the window.
Continue to record the temperature and type of weather daily. Teach children to check and record the weather independently or in pairs. You can either choose a student to perform these tasks at the beginning of each lesson or assign them as one of your classroom jobs. Students may need assistance reading the thermometer or looking up the weather report.
Record the weekend weather yourself, ask students to record it for homework or choose to graph only weekdays.
Give each student a bar graph template at the end of the month to graph the types of weather. According to the Common Core Standards currently used in 44 states, students as early as first grade can be expected to organize data in up to three categories and compare the groups. Model for students how to count the frequency of each weather type and color and how to label the bar graph. For students with disabilities, modify the activity by providing smaller versions of the calendar picture icons to glue on the graph to reduce the fine motor demands of drawing and coloring and to help students make concrete connections between the pictures on the calendar and the pictures on their graph.
Graph the daily temperature on a large piece of graph paper with students' help. Label the graph with dates along the horizontal access and with temperature on the vertical access. Help students follow the grid lines and plot the temperature. This is a good opportunity to introduce rounding numbers by asking questions like "Is 71 degrees closer to the line for 70 or 75?"
Ask students to draw conclusions about the graphs and the weather. Have them identify what type of weather was most and least frequent. Ask how many more days of rain there were than of snow, for instance. Students can respond to these questions orally or in writing. Have students make predictions about how the graph would change during a different part of the year or guess what the temperature will be tomorrow.