Preparing for a Storm

Today we continued working on our "Severe Weather" projects from last week.  We researched safety precautions to take during severe weather and will start working on our Powerpoint presentations tomorrow.

On another note...

We have been watching the weather forecast and heard there is supposed to be a huge storm tomorrow.  They are calling for lots of rain.  Since we've been learning about rain gauges, we decided to put our class rain gauge out to measure the amount of rainfall.

Check back tomorrow to see how much rain was collected...

Discovery's Final Launch

So we got to witness something fabulous today!  We've been learning all about weather and our mission is to learn as much as we can to "train NASA staff on the best weather conditions for a launch".  Well guess what????  We watched video of the Discovery shuttle's final launch today and we even heard a meteorologist from NASA talking about the weather conditions during the launch.  Cool right?  We know!  Look at these cool pictures from the launch...



Here are some of the videos we watched today.  Click here for the briefing before the launch and the weather conditions for launch day.  Click here for video of the launch.

Severe Weather

Severe weather...what's that???  We learned about different kinds of severe weather today.  We split into our learning groups and each researched a type of severe weather.  We researched tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, winter storms, and thunderstorms.  (Meteorologists have to do research you know.)  We have to learn as much as we can about our type of severe weather so that we can teach the rest of the class.  Here are some pictures of the meteorologists in Room 718 hard at work!

After our research, we get to do experiments making severe weather.  Sounds exciting right???  Don't be scared...we'll keep it contained.  :)

Still looking...

Today we continued our research on weather patterns across the US.  After seeing some of the weather in other parts of the US we're pretty glad we leave in SC right now.  :)  Our weather has been BEAUTIFUL the past couple of weeks!

Weather Patterns Across the US

Ever wondered what the weather is like in other parts of the US?  We have.  We are going to research each region and find out what the weather is like in different parts of that region.  We split up into our learning groups and each looked at a region on the United States map.  (We know about the regions from Social Studies last nine weeks.)  Each group is responsible for researching the weather in a city in the North, South, East, and West of their region.  This investigation is going to take us a couple of days so bare with us.  We'll post along the way.  :)  Here are some pics of us getting started today.

Of course when we finished we had to go out and observe the weather.  It was beautiful outside today!  We could definitely get used to this weather!

Observing the Weather and Clouds

Today we observed the weather.  We used what we had learned about clouds to classify the clouds today.  We noticed that the clouds were thin and stringy (kind of like a spider web).  They are scattered around and are high in the sky.  We know this means they are called "cirrus" clouds.

Exploring Seasons

Today in Science we explored the four seasons.  We talked about the four seasons and researched to find out what the weather is like during each of them.  We found out lots of cool information!  Did you know that Summer has the longest and hottest days of all the seasons?  Did you know that Spring usually begins around March 20th or 21st.  (We're super excited that that's not that far away!)  Did you know that Fall has lots of storms because of the changes in the hot and cold air?  We found out lots of cool stuff!  Check out pictures of us busy at work...