Education Through Weather Day-Camps

Weather Camp was developed in 1991. The idea was to introduce children to weather, promote weather safety and encourage children with an interest in weather, science or math. The first camp had about 35 campers and since then the number has grown to over 100 in 1998.

This program allows parents and children to choose topics that match the interests of the child. We have 4 different introductory sessions for children 7-11 and 3 different advanced sessions for those 12 and above.

Weather Works, the first of the introductory sessions, discusses the basic elements of weather and how they work together to produce the weather. Tornado Alley was designed to focus on severe weather and safety while Hurricane Central focuses on tropical weather and safety. Global Climate was added this past year to give children the opportunity to learn about weather across the globe. El Niño is a big topic in this session.

As children get older, they are able to handle more information. For the advanced sessions, we have taken three of the main topics of the introductory sessions and added more specifics into the discussions. These sessions became Tornado Files, Cyclone World and Weather Dilemma.

At each session campers are encouraged to ask questions and share weather-related stories. It is almost like a workshop panel rather than a classroom, with the meteorologist on duty as the main speaker.

Educators have learned that hands-on activities help children stay interested. Our activities range from handling common weather instruments to taking an observation to demonstrations on the flow of water during an El Niño event. Our goal is to help the children answer their questions through their own experiences.

Each session receives reading material related to the day’s topic to take home and share with their families and a weather kit to set up their own observations at home.

Weather safety has always been our main concern and is covered in every session.

Computers have made it into many middle-class homes and almost every school. We have developed games and demonstrations for use on the computers at our Center. Weather Facts & Fun, Weather Symbols, and Hurricane Chomp all allow the children the opportunity to test their knowledge and skills.

The Internet has been very useful to the development of Weather Camp. Not only have we used it to update and add to our curriculum but we are able to show the campers how to access the same information on their own. In many cases, the campers are excited to know they are using the same information that real meteorologists are using.

We have adapted many popular television games for use in Weather Camp. For example, Weather Jeopardy, taken from the popular game show has categories such as lightning, clouds and hurricane names. Another game, Wind Vane, is a take-off of Hangman. Here children try to guess letters for weather words. If they do not guess the right letter, another part of the wind vane is added on.