Weather

Creation for Kids in Church Camps

The rain and winds that surround us are an integral part of our environment, so it is an important aspect of creation about which we need to teach children. Weather regulates temperatures, provides rain, and sometimes becomes destructive.

Begin with a simple lesson about the water cycle. Set up a slalom course with cones unless you can find a convenient circular trail to play on. Have different parts of the course labeled as different phases of the water cycle. All of the campers start in the ocean, where you, representing the sun, give them the cue to evaporate and enter the cycle. With that cue, the campers run around the course (preferably) up hill until they enter the atmosphere. In the atmosphere, each water molecule must find four other partners before it can form a drop of rain and fall back to earth. Once the campers are "back to earth," they must weave their way through streams and rivers before returning to the ocean where the whole process begins again.

If you happen to be near a stream, dump a small cup of water into the stream and ask the campers where that water will end up. Make the campers name all the creeks and streams of the area until finally they can conclude that the water ends up in the oceans. When you ask about the next step, the campers should already know that in the ocean the process starts over once again. Remind campers that evaporation occurs every where there is water, but the ocean offers the greatest surface area for large amounts of evaporation.

Add various other modeling games to the weather activity as time allows. For instance, you could have the children model a hurricane, complete with an eye to the storm. Let the children start spinning, and then you play an unfortunate town that is attacked by the storm. Or play out the opposite charges that attract each other to form lightning, and the vacuum which air quickly fills to form thunder.

Another good game related to weather is a global warming activity. Start the activity with two lines spaced about fifty feet apart. Choose one person to represent green house gases who tries to tag the other players (representing heat) as they run from one side to another. As the players are tagged, they become green house gases and can move around trying to capture heat. Point out, as the game progresses, that heat gets captured much more easily with more green house gases in the atmosphere. The presence of some greenhouse gases is necessary for life on earth because we need the heat, but too many greenhouse gases quickly throws the climate out of its normal pattern.

Briefly discuss the weather and how it is much like God. Like God, weather can be unpredictable, but at the same time nourishing for the entire earth. More specifically, the Bible compares rain with God's word: "For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it" (Isaiah 55.11-12). The Bible thus suggests the water cycle that the campers just learned about, but ties it to God's Word which also goes out into the world.