"The weatherman lied"
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"The weatherman lied"
| Wed, 08-08-2007 - 9:50am |
The weatherman said it woudl rain today. A storm came through about 6am, and it bucketed down, but it is not raining right *now* so according to Peter, the weatherman lied.
Has anyone had any success teaching nuance to their kids?

Sorry, I'm of no help whatsoever. But if you find the magic answer, please share it...because this is one of the most frustrating things we deal with around our house.
Amy
Hi, Paula,
Well, I can't say that it fully works, but I do have a strategy for my just-turned 6 year old. He also checks outside immediatly after watching a weather report, and does NOT like to be told its raining when it stopped, etc.
When something like that happens, he is also stressed and anxious, and we have a little joke that at least lightens the mood. There is a certain inflection that is scripted from who-knows-where I have to use when I say, "It's a mEEEEEstAIREEEEEEEE!" That always lifts some anxiety and may even put my son in a playful mood.
I tell him that nobody knows the weather and it's a meeeeeestaireeeeeee. (We don't know when the neighbors baby is coming, we don't know if your brother will be sick next week....etc.)
I try to explain that the weather man made a guess. My six year old kind-of gets a part of it. He understands guesses from school science experiments (like sink/float) and from games like battleship (A-1: miss).
He thinks that a mEEEEEstAIREEEEE is something like not knowing who is wearing a sheet and pretending to be a ghost. I think I'm planting some seeds. I hope it will sink in all the way eventually.
I had tried to say that unknown things about the future were a surprize, but that never worked because he got so distracted thinking that he was about to get a new book or DVD, his understanding of surprize, I never could get anywhere with that.
I don't think my son has ANY notion of pre-taping; he assumes TV is live. Instead of battling that, I just avoid having the TV on at all, but that is not going to work forever.
Sidney (Who is fully aware that these thoughts might be ridiculously unhelpful for your situation.)
Does he understand prediction? You can have him do some really easy estimation and prediction activities. Put a number of small things in a jar and have him estimate how many there are. Ask him how he came up w/ his estimation. Then have him count the actual number. Then have him do some prediction exercises. Set up some experiments where he drops a ball off a table and he has to predict how high and which direction it will bounce. Have him do this experiment several times. He can ever keep track of which directions and all that. Explain and show him that sometimes his prediction is accurate sometimes it's a little off.
This is not a quick fix, but by having him do 'experiments' he'll begin to understand scientific processes. You could have him track the weather via satillite and all that. the noaa web site is pretty good. If he likes to play around on the computer it can be fun. He can then start to help predict the weather himself.
You can also have him check out some weather forecasting books from the library and read all about it himself. Bill Nye the science guy has a weather forecasting video too (you'd have to search for it at the library or something).
Weston had some problems w/ weather and not knowing exactly what the weather was going to do-- that whole rigidity to change and having to know exactly how things would be thing. He read lots on it and kind of got onto a mini-obsession over figuring out what the weather was, what clouds were what and all that. He had to watch the weather every single night. It did end the rigidity to the changing weather-- but added other issues.
Betsy
We actually turned the weatherman's prediction into a game at our house.
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Christine
Paula,
Being the avid homeschoolers that we are we turned such accusations against the weatherman's character into reasons to have unit studies on meteorology, lol.
Thanks guys for the great insights.
Sidney, I think that mEEEEEstAIREEEEEEEE thing is hilarious!
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