One aspect of clouds that you can teach your kindergarten class is the impact of wind on clouds. You can illustrate this by helping your students make their own clouds. Cut out pieces of white paper in the shapes of clouds. Cut two equal pieces of paper so that you can stuff the cloud. Use a stapler to attach the two pieces of paper together and stuff the resulting form with wads of newspaper. Punch out holes along the bottom of the cloud and tie white streamers through them. Hang the clouds from the ceiling, preferably near a heating or cooling vent, and show the children how moving air impacts their clouds.
Showing kindergarten students how clouds form can help them understand weather. Conduct an experiment that gives your class hands-on experience with cloud formation. Give each child a spoon that has been in a refrigerator or cooler for a few minutes. Instruct the students to blow onto the surface of the spoon and note the condensation and cloudiness that appears the spoon. This reflects the process by which clouds form in the air. Explain to your class that the air is full of water droplets just like their breath, and when that warm air hits cold air, clouds form. When a cloud contains excessive moisture, precipitation occurs.
Certain books describe various aspects of weather, including clouds and wind, in ways that young children find easy to understand. When you begin lessons on clouds and wind, select a couple of books to read during your unit to help give your kindergartners an age-appropriate look at these aspects of weather. Some good books for this age range include "Like a Windy Day," "Millicent and the Wind," "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" and "The Cloud Book."
Sometimes, simply answering your students' questions can provide them with an age-appropriate understanding of the material. Take your class for a walk or out to the schoolyard on days with various types of clouds or on a windy day. Talk to your class about why you are outdoors and ask if anyone has any questions. Answer the questions as thoroughly as you can. If you don't know an answer, let your class know that you will help them find it. Afterward you can read books or find websites that can help illuminate the questions to which you didn't know the answer.
Making a weather chart can show your kindergarten class how the weather changes and which types of clouds occur during each type of weather. Provide the class with pictures of different types of clouds so that they can identify which type is in the sky on each day. Instead of relying on your kindergarten class to make individual charts, make one to work on together as a class. In addition to the types of clouds, the chart can also note the wind strength and its impact on the clouds in the sky.