Ever wanted to learn about weather from a real meteorologist? Well, here’s your chance: this homeschool weather course was made for families like yours!
Many of you already know Mike Thompson, who started his meteorological career in the U.S. Navy. He continued as a Chief Meteorologist at television stations in Oklahoma City, Charlotte, and Kansas City for nearly 40 years. He also wrote and produced the Emmy Award winning, 20-year show for the Kansas City Royals called School Day at the “K”.
His daughter begged Mike to create a homeschool curriculum for her children, and so “IQ Weather” was born!
Homeschool Weather Course Overview
Designed for grades 4-8, IQ Weather is a completely online experience with video-based lessons, experiments, assessment tests. It includes lesson plans and teacher’s guides, along with a certificate of completion at the end of the course.
Here are the 24 lesson titles:
- Weather Versus Climate – Learn the difference between what you see outside your window, and what happens over centuries.
- The Atmosphere and the Weather Machine – What makes this planet tick?
- Why Study Weather – Weather does whatever it wants…so why bother studying storms, temperature, and other facets of weather?
- Experiment #1
- Air & Wind – What makes the air move?
- Seasons – Explore the annual shift in weather patterns due to the seasons and the extraterrestrial influences on our weather.
- Clouds – Learning the basic cloud types can give you a clue as to what is happening in the sky overhead.
- Experiment #2
- Unique Clouds – Look at some rare and unusual cloud types that you don’t often see.
- Precipitation – Unlock the secrets of rain, snow, hail, sleet and other stuff that falls out of the sky.
- Storms – They are fascinating, dangerous, beneficial, and powerful.
- Experiment #3
- Tornadoes – Investigate how they form, behave, and what we know about their power.
- Storm Chaser Interview – Jon and Shawna Davies are a married couple that has been storm-chasing professionally for decades.
- Radar – These days radar information is available to everyone. But understanding what it is telling you can be tricky.
- Tropical Weather – Hurricanes are the biggest, and most destructive storms on the planet…and yet they perform a very important and necessary function in our atmosphere.
- Oceans and Weather – Water covers over 71% of the earth’s surface and plays a very important role in our weather patterns and the climate.
- Experiment #4
- Winter Weather/Blizzards – When the sun’s rays are focused on the southern hemisphere, the powerful winds of winter create all sorts of hazards.
- Aviation Weather – Whenever we hop on a plane, weather forecasters behind the scenes are making sure our flight is safe.
- Weather Tech – Computing power has made all the difference in weather forecasting. What lies ahead for weather forecasting of the future?
- Solar/Space Weather – Most of what makes our planet’s climate happens in outer space and on the sun.
- Field Trip: NWS
- TV Weather – IQ Weather looks at the evolution of TV weather from the crude beginnings to the high tech version you see today.
In addition, the homeschool weather course blog regularly publishes extra content to expand on your lessons, such as this May 2 post on Storm Development Indicators: https://www.iqweather.com/blog/iq-weather-homeschool-extra-storm-development-indicators
Our affiliate partnership
MPE has a special affiliate partnership with IQ Weather, where each purchase through our affiliate link will help fund our organization with a percentage of each sale.
We’re excited and honored to be partnering with Mike Thompson. Who knows … maybe he will be available to speak at our next homeschool conference in April 2022!
So what are you waiting for? Sign up for the course and let us know how it helps your homeschool!
