Co-op Week Two

My lesson plan for this week's co-op class is ready - I have one demo-type thing to put together and make sure it works before class this afternoon! 



Weather Unit - Lesson Two

1.  We will review the difference between weather and climate, then discuss the five major climate areas on Earth.  I have a map with climate info to hand out (which I found in pdf form online) that we will discuss and they can color if they like.

• Polar climates are characterized by large, dry, cold air masses


• Desert climates are dry, receiving less than 10 inches of moisture annually


• Tropical climates are found near the equator, and are wet and warm year round.  They usually receive over 80 inches of rain annually, and experience a wet and dry season.  We will talk briefly about the monsoon of southeast Asia as an example of this


• Sub-tropical climates receive less rainfall than tropics.  They are warm most of the year, but are cooler in winter than tropics.


• Temperate climates experience the most seasonal change.  They have warm summers, cool winters, and usually a distinct spring and autumn

2.  What climate zone do we live in?  I have two worksheets that we will work on - one is a trivia page of weather and climate related facts, and the other is a worksheet found in God's Design for Heaven and Earth: Our Weather and Water.  The kids will have some weather reports from the newspapers and world atlases and will look for examples of countries in the different climate zones, and some weather related items in the newspaper.



3.  We will talk about the water cycle.  I liked this diagram and explanation except that it kept referring the the "billions of years" nonsense.  So I kept looking for a suitable diagram that the kids could have copies of, and finally found this one: Water Cycle diagram  We'll discuss evaporation, transpiration, and vaporization; as well as how warm, moist air rises, then cools, and as it cools, it sinks and loses the water it carries in the form of precipitation.

4.  I do have a couple of options for making a model water cycle - I am testing both of them this morning to see which will work better for the class.

5.  Everyone will get the pages "Weather Recipe" from Considering God's Creation to work on.  If we have time (I bet we won't!) we can work on it in class.