Immediately following the investigations above, ask your students to share their drawings.
Begin with the cup investigation, and confirm that everyone drew or circled the same arrangement. (If different arrangements were chosen, ask someone to repeat those arrangements to test the wetness of the material in the bottom of the cup.)
In Investigation Question 1 students recognized that air affects other things, which is the result of the fact that it is matter. This simple procedure will help your students to understand that air is "something," that is, that like all matter it takes up space and can be contained. They will learn this by seeing that air takes up the space in a cup that is inverted in water such that objects in the cup do not get wet.
These first investigations of weather offer a set of experiences and thoughtful discussions to help your students understand that air is matter that can be experienced and measured. Some of the measurements and observations your students make will be similar to those used by meteorologists to forecast the weather.
In earlier investigations in this soil unit, students mostly focused on the inorganic parts of the soil profile. In this investigation, students will observe some of the living things in soil.
