In a classroom setting, it can be hard to demonstrate what exactly is wind, and the school curriculum may not allow the flexibility for your wind lesson to be taken outside or postponed until a windy day. Still, teaching your first-graders about the movement of air can be a good stepping stone to talking about wind. Using tissue paper, cut long strips to make streamers and give one to each child. Have your students blow at their streamer. Talk about how the air they blow is pushing at the streamer. Now, have them blow at other objects such as their pencil, a textbook or a handful of crayons. Discuss what happens.
This wind project focuses on learning how air pushes things. After you've discussed how the air the children blew affected different objects, invite a discussion about how the wind might push at things. If you have the opportunity, take your discussion outside on a windy day. Ask your class if they think the wind will blow down a building? Will it shake the tree's leaves? Talk about the similarities between the children blowing their streamers and the wind blowing paper. The more associations you can make between the project and the wind, the more the children will infer on their own.
On a windy day, take your class outdoors with bubbles and kites. Move to a wide open area if possible and begin blowing the bubbles. Show your class how you can blow the bubbles, but the wind will also make bubbles. Have your class watch what happens to the bubbles when the wind isn't blowing compared to when it is blowing. Next, unroll the kite and let the wind lift it higher. Talk to your class about how the wind can lift things, as well as push at them. The bubble part of this activity can also be done in front of a fan. Make sure to enlist your first-graders' imaginations to pretend the fan is making real wind.
Now that your first-grade class has seen that the wind can carry bubbles and lift kites, talk about how it does this. Describe that the wind is like a fan blowing air around, and that as long as the air keeps moving, the objects it pushes will also keep moving. Have your class look up at the clouds. Ask them if they see the clouds being moved by the wind like the bubbles were. Begin an open discussion about what the wind can do to other things in the air. If you see a bird fly by, talk about how birds flap their wings to fly and then glide through the air using the wind to push them along.