Make Your Own Forecast

While you’re all at home together, making your own forecast can be a fun activity for kids and adults!

To be honest, I can’t explain all the intricacies of making a forecast in one blog post, so we’re going to take a slightly different approach. At the bottom of this post, you will find the forecast sheet I take to schools with me. If you would like a PDF version instead of the image here, use the Contact form on this website to send me an email and I will pass that on to you! Fill in the information in the top lines:

• write in today’s date (a good teaching moment for the younger kids)

• you are the forecaster so write your name there

• you can go to wdrb.com or open our (free) WDRB Weather app to find the current temperature

• go outside or look out the window to see what the weather is currently doing (rain, sun, clouds, etc.)

That’s the easy part :) In the bottom section it’s time to make your forecast. You can write words or draw pictures to describe what you think will happen. Take some time to sit outside or watch out the window to see what the weather is doing. Use those observations to come up with an idea of what you think will happen next. Here are a few examples:

• If you notice the breeze feels cool, temperatures will probably drop. If you notice the breeze feels hot, temperatures will probably climb.

• Does the air feel sticky? That probably means a chance for rain or thunderstorms soon.

• This can be a great opportunity to explain to kids why temperatures drop at night. During the day the sunshine (or solar radiation for the older kids) warms the air and the ground. At night when the sun is on the other side of the globe, we aren’t getting that same heat. In fact the sun warmed the ground during the day and at night a lot of that warmth in the ground escapes.

• If you’ve made any of my at-home weather tools, use these in your observations and forecast!