Our last meeting of of January was spent earning the Weather Badge. We did not follow the badge requirements exactly, substituting a drama activity and learning about weather emergencies in place of weather experiments. The meeting began with our usual opening, followed by a quick discussion about "What is Weather?"We then played an active game called Four Winds. The game leader is the weather forecaster and she tells the girls which walls are North, South, East and West. The weather forecaster then calls out "The wind is blowing from the ..." and the girls then have to run to the wall towards which the wind is blowing. For example, if the wind is blowing from the North, the girls would run to the South wall.
Our next game was a Cloud Identification Relay. Before starting, we talked about the different types of clouds and looked at pictures. Each girl had a card with a picture on one side and a fact on the other. The girls held up their cards one at a time while reading out their fact or description. Once everyone had shared their information, we split up into patrols and each patrol had to race to the other end of the room to pick up cards with pictures of clouds and titles. Once the patrol had all of their cards, they had to match the pictures to the correct names.
Next, we learned how to read different types of weather maps using instructions and print-outs of maps from the internet. Some of the maps we looked at included radar, satellite, precipitation, and temperature.
This was followed by a discussion about weather emergencies. We focused on extreme heat, thunderstorms and winter storms, as these are things that all of the girls have experienced. After our discussion, each group took a fact sheet and created a weather forecast, including what people should do to prepare for oncoming weather and to stay safe once it arrived.
We ended the meeting by creating our own rainstorm. The song leader starts each action and walks around the inside of the circle. As she passes each person, they start doing the action:
- Rub finger and thumb together
- Rub palms together
- Snap fingers
- Clap hands
- Stomp feet
- Clap Hands
- Snap fingers
- Rub palms together
- Rub finger and thumb together
- Stop
