Meteorology

Preschool Investigation

When thinking about how science is taught, it is important to push past our current traditions. For example, it is common in many preschool and primary classrooms to start out the day with a morning meeting that includes the calendar and charting weather conditions using a cartoon sunshine poster. While a commonly accepted practice, is this really the best way to teach weather? Should weather, the quintessential multi-sensory experience be relegated to a 2 dimensional labeling activity? ACCESS asks teachers to take advantage of authentic science experiences, and weather is one of the best and cheapest authentic experiences, readily available, observable, and recordable. The concept of weather is complex and can be studied on many different levels. It can support academic content in science, language arts, math, social studies and the arts. It can also provide experiences related to developmental skills across all domains.