Grade 2 Earth Science Unit:

Weather and Seasons

(January 8 - March 3, 8 weeks)

1. What is weather?
2. How can weather be described and measured?
3. Why is the weather important to people? How does it affect our lives?
4. How does the weather change with the seasons?

1. Understand that weather is the current state of the air (temperature, wind, clouds and precipitation)
2. Understand how weather and forecasts affect people’s lives (how they live, work, travel)
3. Understand that weather follows predictable patterns of change with regional climates and the changing of the seasons.

1. Measure data accurately using appropriate tools (such as thermometer for temperature, weather vane for wind direction, anemometer for wind speed, and rain gauge for precipitation)
2. Make accurate written and drawn observations applying scientific vocabulary.

1. Air is an invisible gas that takes up space and can push on things
2. A meteorologist is a scientist who studies weather
3. Basic weather descriptions: Sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy
4. Temperature descriptions: degrees, Fahrenheit, Celsius, hot, warm, cool, cold, freezing
5. Simplified water cycle: evaporation (when liquid water turns into a gas and rises up into the air) and precipitation (when it turns back into a liquid or solid as rain, snow, sleet)
6. Basic clouds types: cumulus (white puffy clouds, can grown into larger rain clouds), stratus (long flat layered clouds), cirrus (very thin and wispy clouds), nimbus (thick gray clouds which can bring rain)
7. Weather tools: thermometer (to measure temperature), anemometer (to measure wind speed), weather vane (to measure wind direction), rain gauge (to measure rainfall)