Kengo Yamada remembers asking a class of kindergartners where they thought wind came from. “One said, ‘Trees make wind,’” says the associate director of early childhood education at New Jersey’s Liberty Science Center. When Yamada asked the child why he thought that, the child said, "Well, I was walking outside and I saw the trees shaking, so they must make wind.” 

Although the kindergartner wasn’t quite on the mark, Yamada says that child was starting to make sense of the world in a scientific way. And weather is actually an easy way to get kids wondering about science. (These experiments will teach kids about lightning, rain, and more.)

“They don’t have to conceptualize what wind, snow, or rain