Your students will gain an understanding of the force behind wind with this interactive activity. Turn on a fan and ask your students to stand in front of it and explain that the fan is creating wind. Ask them how it feels and if they can feel it moving their hair. Discuss how wind can move objects about; the stronger the wind, the heavier the objects it can blow. To investigate how wind moves objects, provide your students with different items that will and will not move in the wind of the fan; a feather, a piece of paper, a block and a marker, for example. Ask your students to predict which objects will blow in the wind and which won't and test their predictions by holding the items in front of the fan and letting them go. Discuss why some of the items moved and some didn't.
This lesson allows your students to creatively express themselves, hone their gross motor skills and explore the effects of wind. Provide your students with lengths of crepe paper streamers and ask them to wave them about in the air. Explain that the streamers move above because as students move the streamers, they are creating wind in front of them. To further explore the wind, put on music and encourage students to dance like the wind and move their streamers as they dance.
This lesson incorporates arts and crafts to explore the wind. Help your students roll a piece of construction paper into a cylinder and secure the ends of the paper with tape. Cut lengths of crepe paper streamers and have kids glue or staple the streamers around the bottom of the cylinder. To create a holder for the windsock, punch two holes in either side of the top of the cylinder and thread a piece of ribbon through the holes, creating a loop from which to hang the craft. Kids can personalize their windsocks using markers, stickers and glitter glue to decorate the. Hang the windsocks from trees and watch as they blow about in the wind.
This lesson will help your students gain an understanding of how the wind blows in different directions. Set up a weather vane outside your classroom; push the end of the vane into the ground or secure it to the top of a post. Inform students that wind blows in all different directions; this is an ideal time to teach compass directions. Take your students outside to observe the weather vane each day for a week. Have them record the direction the wind was blowing each day and compare the observations at the end of the week.