Who Has Seen the Wind?

Core Learning Experience + Supplies and Equipment

  • ​​Take some tissue or crepe paper streamers outdoors to test for wind. 
  • Explore an electric fan (supervised). Place various items in front of it, and find out if they blow away when the fan is turned on (e.g. paper, foil, ball, tissue, rock, leaves, toy, etc). Try it with different speeds. How far do they go? Have the children try blowing the items with their mouth.
  •  Blow cotton balls or tissue crumples across a table with your mouth, or through a straw. Set up distance “markers” on the table – did your cotton ball go as far as the block? Not as far as the scissors? Beyond the teddy? Older children use a tape measure.
  • Make a “wind-catcher” by tying each end of a piece of yarn to the two handles of a plastic grocery bag. Take it outside on a windy day to “catch the wind”. 

Possible/Expected Discoveries

  • Simply speaking, wind is moving air.
  • The strength of a wind ranges from barely discernable to hurricane strength. Learn some wind vocabulary – breeze, gusty, tornado, hurricane, typhoon, blustery,   
  • Wind can make other things move. What things have you seen the wind moving? The power of blowing wind moving things can be called “energy”. Sometimes wind energy can make machines work, to make things easier and faster for people. An example of wind creating energy is a windmill.
  • Wind is invisible, just as air is. However, we can see the things that are moved by wind, and the effects of it. How can we tell if the wind is blowing?
  • Wind can push the sails on sailboats. Make sailboats with Styrofoam, toothpicks and paper sails. Blow them across a sink of water. Can a sailboat sail on a day with no wind? How can it go then? Some other vehicles that use wind are parasails, gliders and hot air balloons

Extended Learning and Other Curriculum Areas

  • ​​Blow a blob of diluted liquid watercolor in different directions across a paper.
  • Keep a feather in the air by blowing it. How long?
  • Make a pinwheel.
  • Purchase or make wind chimes. 
  • Make a simple windsock by creating a tube with a piece of construction paper, decorating it, taping streamers around the bottom, and a yarn handle at the top.

Activity Packs and Printables

Websites

Books

The Wind Blew by Pat Hutchins
Gilberto and the Wind by Marie Hall Ets
Millicent and the Wind by Robert Munsch
Feel the Wind by Arthur Dorros
I Face the Wind by Vicki Cobb