Children's Understanding Of Weather In Higher Class And Their Implications For Teaching

The weather has close relation with human, which has significant impact on human life from personal dress to global food security. Children have their own understanding of the world around, especially different from adult in weather phenomena. It is found that science education in most kindergartens including study of weather plays positive role in scientific thinking development of early childhood. In view of few researches on children's understanding of weather, the paper attempts to find their relevant experience and thinking feature and propose teaching suggestion about the weather education in kindergarten based on the summary about children's understanding of weather in higher class.This study does interview of 60 children selected from two higher classes in a kindergarten of Shanghai by using specific weather picture, the content of which relates to their identification and understanding of weather phenomena, the relation between weather and life and the weather forecast, and participation of the class meteorological corner.The paper finds that children in higher class have good identification of common weather phenomena, but bad in special weather and slightly different in each weather condition. Most children have such understanding of the weather formation as inaccurate finalism,faintest idea, few children choose accurate finalism animism and religious determinism. Children show different degree of understanding of relation between weather and life, who know more about rain, snow and lightning, but less about fog. Most children have a rich understanding of weather forecast, which used to tell people different weather, future weather and weather in different parts and to arrange life plans. Most children know that there is meteorological corner in class and have participation wish, but few actually joins.Finally, the paper proposes weather teaching suggestion in kindergarten based on the study results, such as providing children with more opportunities for full expression and communication, showing their experience of weather phenomena, integrating environmental protection knowledge with weather-related teaching activities.