Weather School / First Weather · ages 2 to 5
Snowy Days
What does one single snowflake look like, up close?
The mission: guess first, then go look
Guess: if you catch one snowflake on your sleeve, will it look like a little dot or a tiny star?
Catch one on a dark sleeve and look fast, before it melts. Which was it? Every flake gets six sides and no two agree on the details.
When the air is very cold, water freezes into tiny ice crystals.
The crystals stick together into soft white flakes that drift down.
Snow is quiet. It muffles the sounds outside.
Professor Weather Rock says
The biggest snowstorms usually happen near freezing, not in the deepest cold. Warmer air carries more water to snow with.
Rocktivity Time!
Pick a door. Every door is a good one.
Move like the weather
Be a snowflake. Drift down slow, twirling, in no hurry at all, and land soft. Now be a snowman melting: get slower, rounder, lower, until you are a puddle on the floor.
Ask them
“Is snow wet or dry? What happens when you hold it?”
The Rocktivity
Fill a cup with snow and bring it inside. Wait. There is far less water than snow, and that surprises everybody.
When snow is falling, try this
Stand outside in it for one minute and just listen. Guess first what snow sounds like. It is the quietest weather there is, and it makes the whole street quieter too.
Is the rock right?
You looked with your own eyes. The rock is outside looking too. Ask it what it sees, then decide together who read the sky better.
Words we learned
For the grown-up
That melted cup is the ten-to-one rule: roughly ten inches of snow makes about one inch of water. A real number, learned by waiting.
Rocktivity
Take it off the screen
A colouring sheet with the big word to trace, plus the whole lesson in print. Free for any home or classroom.
The trail continues
One day the snow will stop coming and the drips will start. That is not the sky being moody. That is the year turning a page. Go check what your favourite tree is wearing today.
The Seasons explains whose turn it is.