GUEST BLOGGER ROBERTA GIBSON
Wind is air movement. Since air is not visible, however, wind is generally inferred by seeing or feeling its effect on ourselves or other objects.
Great Gusts: Winds of the World and the Science Behind Them by Melanie Crowder and Megan Benedict and illustrations by Khoa Le features 14 winds from regions around the world.
Show the cover illustration and ask what kind of weather is happening. What features allow the students to guess that it is windy (the waving tree branches, the girl’s posture, her hair and coat flying back, the swirling lines, etc.)
Devices such as kites, pinwheels, flags, or wind socks can help measure and explore air movement.
Make a craft kite, pinwheel, or windsock.
Note: Hold off on decorating the crafts. The students will decorate with either wind names or poems later in the final section.
Construction paper kite
Note: For classroom use, you can omit the dowels.
Windsocks and pinwheels
My Growing With Science blog post has step-by-step instructions and materials lists for making windsocks and pinwheels, but these videos are fun to watch too. Talk about how each device moves with the wind.
Gather wind names.
Have a world map handy to show where different winds are found around the world.
Hurricanes and tornados are names for wind storms that the students will recognize, but the names for regional winds are not as familiar. For example, Willy-willies occur in Australia and Nor’easters commonly hit New England. Santa Anas cause damage in California. During Arizona summers, great walls of dust called Haboobs race across the landscape. The name was borrowed from similar dust storms found in the Middle East.
Research and create a list of names for winds. Discuss what they mean and how they might have come about. Some are derived from local languages.
- Wikipedia List of Wind Names
- Names of Winds (older list)
Extension
Describe some wind events. Provide some synonyms for wind, like squall or zephyr. Ask your students to brainstorm and come up with their own wind event names.
Write poems.
Great Gusts is a collection of poems. Some of those included reflect the style of poetry from the area where the winds occur. For example, the wind from Japan is an “Oroshi.” The author chose to write the poem about it using haiku, a type of Japanese poetry. The form consists of three lines. The first line has five syllables, the second seven syllables, and the third has five syllables.
Shape poems (also called concrete poems) might be fun to try. Encourage the students to write a poem about the wind in the shape of a kite.
Encourage the student to incorporate sensory info in their poems, such as the sounds of wind.
Wind can even have a smell. Before a summer rain in Arizona, the monsoon winds smell like creosote, a tangy earth odor. Thunderstorms can have the acrid odor from lightning strikes. Ocean breezes can smell fishy.
Extension
Write a poem about wind without using the word “wind.”
Check out some earlier LitLinks posts with lessons using poetry:
Decorate the crafts with wind names and/or poems.
Add swirling lines to represent the movement of wind. Display the crafts.
Featured image credit: “Spinny, Spiney Kite” by yerffej9 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Roberta Gibson’s muse sends her short stories for adults and picture books for children. Check out her nonfiction picture book, How to Build an Insect and look for her upcoming title from MIT Kids Press. When her muse isn’t sending stories, Roberta gardens, studies martial arts, and fends off the affection of four cats. Where to find Roberta Gibson on the Internet: Robertagibsonwrites.com, BlueSky @robertagibson.bsky.social, Instagram @robiegibson.
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