Weather Words and What They Mean

Weather Words and What They Mean. ISBN: 0-8234-0805-1. Gail Gibbons. (1990). Washington Post/Children's Book Guild Award; National Science Teacher's Association/Children's book Council Award (these awards are for other books). Nonfiction Picture Book. Ages 4-8.

This book illustrates and defines the major terms used in the field of weather: temperature, moisture, air pressure, and wind. Gibbons uses pictures to describe these terms so they are understandable. These four areas of weather are then broken down into more detail. For example, moisture is broken down into dew, frost, rain, hail, and snow. The term describing the weather in the picture is very visible and set apart by being in a bubble, whereas the supporting information is in block text.

Gibbons uses the pages efficiently by breaking some of them into blocks to allow placement of more than one picture, so that similar descriptions can be compared side by side.


This book would be a great introduction to a science weather unit in the classroom. It is a book that would be better to use as discussion time instead of reading right through it because there is no story and all factual information. Use it as a tool to start the Know, Want to Know, and Learned chart. After reading this book, children could investigate and describe the current weather and start a weather chart in the classroom. They could write a story about their favorite type of weather or an experience they had in the weather that was scary, was fun, was exciting, was strange. It could open up discussion on how we measure weather and describe weather.

You could do a weather demonstration in conjunction with this book. For example, create a cloud with hot water and bowl/Saran wrap and ice.