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Each UNIT STUDY includes suggestions of books to READ, ideas to WRITE, crafts to CREATE, more to EXPLORE, snacks to ENJOY and other ways to LEARN about a specific topic! To read more about the concepts behind my UNIT STUDIES, read this.
If you find it handy to have a simplified printable of these suggestions, you can find one, along with several free printables, here in the FREE TORNADOES Unit Study Printable Pack.
Otherwise, read on for a more detailed version with links embedded!
{Note: The links are pink! Just think, “pink link” if you are wanting to follow a link to something.}
Unit Study: TORNADOES
As mentioned in the HURRICANES UNIT STUDY, I was born and raised in Southern California. I didn’t even know the weather channel existed until I was attending a college friend’s wedding in Nebraska in July. And, in between the ceremony and the reception, there was a TORNADO warning. All of the locals had their ears tuned to the weather channel on the radio while still making plans to finish out the wedding festivities. I was just glad I was with a bunch of experienced mid-westerners who knew what to do, when to do it and if we needed to do anything! Now, we live in Kansas and that lack of knowledge from that wedding day, is long gone! Whether you are like me and not raised around twisters or you were born and raised in Torndao Alley, hopefully, you’ll find something helpful in this TORNADO UNIT STUDY.
READ: Tornadoes by Gail Gibbons If possible, a book by Gail Gibbons is always the perfect place to begin any UNIT STUDY. Her books, including TORNADOES, are filled with well-documented factual information, presented in a kid-friendly way and accompanied by lovely illustrations. My library’s online resource even had a video version of the book! And, there is a mini book companion pack ready to be printed in the FREE TORNADOES Unit Study Printable Pack.
Otis and the Tornado by Loren Long is a delightful fictitious tale about a sweet farm tractor who saves a surly bull from the TORNADO that strikes their farm. A picture book with delightful illustrations, this book was written for the younger crowd and would be an excellent read-aloud! The sequencing activity and comprehension questions included in the FREE TORNADOES Unit Study Printable Pack. would also increase the purpose for slightly older kids.
Extreme Weather Tornadoes by Anne Wendorff is a short chapter book written for the middle-elementary years and covers safety tips as it explains how twisters form, behave, and are tracked and predicted. It also includes several photographs to aid in an understanding of the reality of TORNADOES. The FREE TORNADOES Unit Study Printable Pack includes a one-page scavenger hunt that could be used with nearly any non-fiction book on the topic.
Inside Tornadoes by Mary Kay Carson takes the reader as far inside a TORNADO as is possible in print with vivid photographs, fold-out pages, detailed maps and colorful charts. There are several pages of before/after photos and real-life stories too.
WRITE: If you have also studied HURRICANES, in the FREE TORNADOES Unit Study Printable Pack, there is a writing activity uses a Venn Diagram to compare TORNADOES with HURRICANES.
And, there is also a simple writing prompt that asks the writer to identify the differences between a TORNADO Watch and a TORNADO Warning. For a girl who has lived in Kansas for a decade and still cannot keep track of which is which, believe me when I say this writing activity could come in super handy!
LEARN: If you want an easy-to-use printable pack that teaches all about what causes TORNADOES, check out this resource from Hess UnAcademy. It’s not free but it’s fairly inexpensive and well worth the few bucks!
CREATE: I love this fingerpainted TORNADO craft which also uses random things picked up from outside. But if you don’t feel up to fingerpainting, try this super duper simple paper craft. And if you want even easier than that, check out this coloring page! If you have older kids with free-time on their hands, challenge them to build a Lego TORNADO! And kids of all ages should enjoy this ripped-magazine mosaic project which I think does a phenomenal job of showing how chaotic TORNADOES really are!
ENJOY: As you can probably imagine, TORNADO foods are few and far between but I did find one mom who threw her son a TORNADO birthday party when he turned five. Along with cake, she also served both cheese and chocolate TORNADOES {AKA: Bugels} and rainwater in TORNADO glasses. You can see her cleverness here. I also think these TORNADO hotdogs are pretty cool and certainly show off the twistiness of TORNADOES.
EXPLORE: Unlike snacks, there are loads of TORNADO experiments and videos. An easy experiment is this TORNADO in a bottle. It requires nothing out of the ordinary and looks fairly easy. But, if you already need to make a WalMart run or use Amazon a lot, you might want to pick up some glow-in-the-dark paint so you can make this glowing TORNADO in a jar instead! It looks super cool. For the easiest version, check out this one. It uses just a glass. For a quick 4-minute video lesson on TORNADOES, check this out. And, for the Top Ten Tornadoes filmed by a storm-chaser, check out this 12-minute video.
For another Unti Study about wild weather, check out Unit Study: HURRICANES.
And for an entire series of Summer Unit Studies, go here.
Unit Study: TORNADOES
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