IQ Weather Overview
IQ Weather is a video-based weather program designed for fifth grade and higher. This in-depth study of weather covers far more than the generic basics of rain, sun, and snow. Timberdoodle provided me with the opportunity to review IQ Weather.
Lessons
Each Lesson is a 5-10 minute video followed by a computer-graded quiz. There is a PDF of quiz answers and explanations with each lesson. In addition, there are lesson Plans with before and after discussion questions, vocabulary, and additional resources on the topic. The additional resources allow you to click links to more information to improve student understanding and help students who want to further their studies. Finally, a Teacher Guide covers what will be covered in the lesson to help the teacher/parent prepare for the class.
The lessons could be done together with an adult as a guided study, but older students could also complete them independently.
There are twenty lessons that include a variety of topics within the broader subject of weather. This includes learning about weather vs. climate, clouds, different types of weather (storms, tornados, tropical weather, etc.), and various weather technologies.
Experiments
In addition to the lessons, eight experiments coordinate with some of the studies. The experiments include an explanation, a materials list, a video, and a quiz. Most of the experiments would be very simple to do at home, but a few are more complex.
If you could not do the experiment at home, the video shows the experiment being completed. It allows students to learn through that watching, though ideally, you would conduct at least some experiments.
For example, in one experiment, you simply needed a bucket of hot water, a bucket of cold water, an empty plastic bottle, a balloon, and a rubber band. Students could then see how different temperatures affected the air.
However, one of the more complex ones required liquid nitrogen and safety equipment. That was one we decided to just watch and learn through the video.
How We Used IQ Weather
While this program is recommended for 5th grade and above, I have a 4th grader and a kindergartener who wanted to learn more about the weather. I primarily used this for my 4th grader, but I allowed the kindergartener to watch the videos with him. (The program will only score one student on the quizzes, but the company says the whole family is welcome to use the rest of the content.)
My fourth grader learned a lot through the videos and discussion, though he still had trouble with some quizzes. I think the age range of fifth and above is reasonably accurate, but younger students can get a lot from the program if you don’t expect complete mastery.
Conclusions
We enjoyed the IQ Weather course from Timberdoodle. I believe that it would make a great standalone weather study, but you could also easily use it as a supplement if you were doing a different program and just wanted to go more in-depth with the weather.
If you do the experiments, discussion questions, extra readings, etc., it can take several hours per lesson. However, a lesson would only take about fifteen minutes if you chose just to do the videos and quizzes. So, it is very flexible based on your family’s needs.
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