Weather

Tree rings are an indicator of the types of weather and even the overall climate and its changes that a tree experiences over its very long life. (The study of tree rings is called dendrochronology). From the viewpoint of a very old tree, describe weather and climate conditions that the tree lived through over the course of 200 years.  The particular tree that is telling the story happens to be a really smart tree and also includes WHY and HOW a particular weather event occurred.

Choose a weather event and write acrostic poems about the topic’s characteristics.  Use such events as rain, snow, wind, thunder, lightning, cloud, tornado, hurricane, flood, aurora borealis, fog, cold front, warm front, air pressure, atmosphere, climate, ozone, evaporation, condensation, precipitation, greenhouse effect, el nino, frost, dew, inversion, etc.

–The tornado in The Wizard of Oz is central to its story.  It moved Dorothy, Toto, and Dorothy’s entire house to the Land of Oz.  Write a different beginning to the story and use a different weather phenomenon to move Dorothy and Toto to Oz.  (Dorothy did live in Kansas where tornadoes often occur.  Maybe Dorothy needs to live in Jamaica or Mongolia or India.) Or write an additional chapter to the story where some kind of weather-related event changes the plot.  What if those horrible flying monkeys were caught in a blizzard and got frostbite on their wingtips and could no longer fly? Include some good, accurate weather information in your adaptation/continuation of this famous book and movie.

–Compose weather songs.  Write your own lyrics but use the music from familiar songs.  For example, write a song about fog that is sung to the tune of On Top of Old Smokey.  Or write a song about the water cycle to the tune of Yankee Doodle.  Or write a song about snow to the tune of Eensy Weensy Spider. Be sure and make your lyrics be scientifically accurate.

The Norse god, Kari, had a son named Jokul Frosti.  (This is one of the conjectures about his origin). We know this son as Jack Frost.  Jack Frost is a creature / man / elf / goblin who brings the first cold weather to an area.  Write a tale about Jack Frost.  Give him some adventures.  Let him interact with local people.  Or write a short play with Jack Frost as one of the central characters.  Make sure that Jack Frost offers plenty of pertinent and accurate weather information.

Superheroes are always fun and popular.  Invent your own superhero whose super talent is that he/she can control the weather. Give your hero some adventures.  Put him/her in a few situations where he/she “saves the day” by controlling the weather, and you describe the scenario in good detail.  Your superhero also likes to make sure that the people he saves from peril understand the “why” of weather.  So if your hero saves a little girl’s puppy by creating a blanket of fog so that the puppy wasn’t lifted out of the backyard by a hungry hawk, the superhero will sit the little girl and the puppy down and explain to them how and why fog forms.  (Many superheroes are just really generous with their knowledge like that).

Pourquoi tales (pourquoi means “why” in French) are a type of story that peoples of long ago created to help explain natural events.  For example, there is a pourquoi tale about how ostriches got their long necks.  Many ancient cultures had thunder gods (in ancient Greece, the thunder god is Zeus).  These gods sometimes threw thunderbolts at the earth, and this helped explain the phenomenon of thunder in the world.  Choose an aspect of weather and write a pourquoi tale that explains why it occurs.

In the United States, each year on February 2nd, Punxatawney Phil, a chubby groundhog, attempts to predict the weather and indicate how much longer winter weather will last.  Write a story about a different kind of weather-predicting creature.  This new creature may use different kinds of techniques to predict the weather because seeing one’s shadow is not really very helpful.  Or write a story where Punxatawney Phil goes on strike and refuses to predict the weather and, as a result, mayhem ensues.

The Nile is the longest river in Africa. The ancient Egyptians believed that the yearly flooding of the Nile was due to the goddess, Isis, overflowing the river with her tears because of her grief over the death of her husband, Osiris.  Write a fanciful tale about why Utah has the Great Salt Lake and incorporate weather events into your story.

Utah has a slogan that has actually been trademarked---Utah: The Greatest Snow on Earth.  The slogan is even on many of Utah’s license plates.  Design a new license plate for Utah but keep the great snow slogan.  Instead of a graphic of a skier that is on the current license plate, design a license plate with a few of the factual reasons WHY Utah has the best snow in the world.  Because your license plate will contain plenty of snow information that will help to advertise Utah’s many skiing opportunities and thus be helpful to the economy, the state of Utah will allow your license plate to be a little larger than the usual ones.  It will be large enough to contain an actual paragraph about Utah’s great snow.

Chris Van Allsburg (author/illustrator of Jumanji, The Polar Express, The Widow’s Broom, etc.) wrote a book called The Stranger.  Obtain a copy from your school or public library.  Describe who/what you think the stranger is.  How does he affect the weather and the seasons in the story?  Why will it be important for him to return next year?