First Grade Meteorologist Project (with Printable Freebie!)
When presented with two classes of 28 high-energy first graders for the last class of their day, one needs to tap into their full creativity to find science projects that are fun, age-appropriate, and simple enough that I’m not running between 28 sets of little hands trying to help. As we approached the end of our weather unit, I had to abandon my initial ambitions of making videos of the children pretending to be meteorologists for something I hoped would be equally charming - mini meteorologist displays using paper plates!
My model for the students to reference.
Now, I can’t claim that this idea is wholly original. I spend a fair amount of time scrolling “science education” on Pinterest and I was inspired by the numerous paper plate projects I saw. My first graders love creative, hands-on projects, so I thought this would be a fun way to demonstrate learning and have something physical to take home and show off. If you would like to do this with your class, read on to see what I did!
Before class, I pre-folded the plates. Many of the students I teach struggle with fine motor skills, so having them pre-folded helped with this challenge. Additionally, I read through IEPs and made sure to pre-cut for the couple of students who are not able to use scissors.
At the top of class, we watched the local weather report. The background I printed for the paper plate sets matched the reporters. We’ve been talking about how people use color to communicate temperature and precipitation. With their student thermometers, we read the temperature and recorded it on their paper thermometers. Then, using the weather report, picked a symbol that matched to color in.
With that, I released students to color and trim! All the resources they needed were in the caddies in the middle of the table, leaving me free to circulate and help as needed. Students loved this project, though they needed a fair amount of help securing their figurines to the paper. As a bonus, they folded up nicely to protect their projects in their backpacks!
If you would like to do this with your class, here is what you will need:
A pack of paper plates
Printed set of materials (available in English and Spanish)
Scissors
Markers or other coloring material
Glue (sticks are okay, white glue is better)
Clear tape, in case you can’t get the figures to stand up with glue alone
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this helpful, or, at the very least, interesting. This was successful with one first grade class, and I am excited to try it with the other.
Happy learning!
