Play, Be, C: The Meteorologist
Resources and activities themed around a STEM job, to build language and understanding around the world of work.
Overview
Meteorologists use special equipment and make forecasts of what the weather is going to be like. Meteorologist are:
Curious and want to know what the weather will be like in the future.
Observant when they look at what the weather is like today.
Collaborative as they work together with other people to get their job done.
Early Learning Goals links
- Mathematics ELG: Numerical Patterns
- Understanding the World ELG: Past and Present
- Understanding the World ELG: People, Culture and Communities
- Understanding the World ELG: The Natural World
- Expressive Arts and Design ELG: Creating with Materials
Characteristics of effective learning
Our EYFS units provide enabling environments with teaching and support from adults. Reflecting on the characteristics of effective teaching and learning, children will have opportunity to learn and develop by:
• playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
• active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
• creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things
Taken from Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.
© Crown copyright 2023 licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0.
The Book
Our suggested book for this Unit is Maisy’s Wonderful Weather, by Lucy Cousins.
You can find out more about the book at the publisher’s page, and the Google Books page will link you to retailers and local libraries.
Activities
These adult led activities and provocations will support the introduction of the meteorologist career to the children in your setting.
Observing clouds adult led activity
Support children to observe and draw the clouds they see in the sky.
Weather station adult led activity
Use homemade meteorological equipment to record the weather for a week.
Making windmills adult led activity
Investigate creating windmills to observe the wind.
Make a kite provocation
Challenge the children to create a kite to fly outside.
Weather forecast role play provocation
Challenge the children to present a weather forecast.
Sun catcher provocation
Challenge the children to create a sun reflector to catch the sun.
STEM at home activities
We have included these links to our related STEM at home activities. These could be sent out for families to try at home, or run in school at a family session.
Visit our make a wind sock STEM at home page here.Resources
You can download our meteorologist poster to use in your setting.
Meteorologists need to know what the weather is doing now, calculate how this will change in the future and use their expert knowledge to refine the details.
They observe and record the weather 24 hours a day across the globe and combine this with satellite pictures to see how the Earth’s atmosphere is behaving: in terms of temperature, precipitation, air pressure and cloud cover.
Meteorologists use thermometers to measure temperature, barometers to measure air pressure and anemometers for measuring wind speed. They use weather balloons to measure temperature, air pressure, wind speed and wind direction in the troposphere, the lowest layer Earth’s atmosphere and where almost all weather conditions take place.
Meteorologists feed the weather data collected into a supercomputer that performs complex equations to create models that predict the future weather. They check their models to make sure their forecasts are going to plan and adjust them where necessary.
Did you know that some weather presenters on television and radio are meteorologists?
