Hurricane Resources for Children

My daughter turned three yesterday.  Originally, we had arranged to throw her a birthday party which was cancelled thanks to Hurricane Irene.  Not only did I have to explain to a three-year-old that her party was cancelled, but that it was due to a storm, specifically a hurricane.

To help her grasp these concepts, I used the following resources, which may be useful for your children or to use with your students next week.


First, I showed her one of the opening clips from Disney's The Little Mermaid.  For those of you unfamiliar with the movie (or it's just been a while), Eric's ship is capsized by a hurricane.  Here's the clip:

All of the destructive force of a hurricane is plainly shown here, but as a cartoon.  Now, this scene might become scary for some children once they realize you are trying to teach them that hurricanes are REAL and not just something that happens in movies.  In order to help with this, I found the following on another blog.  Here is a direct copy and paste from School Library Monthly:

LOOKING FOR HURRICANE RESOURCES?

Sylvan Dell Publishing has posted free access to its digital book of Ready, Set, WAIT! … What Animals Do Before a Hurricane. A screenshot is below. This could be an interesting way to talk about the storm in a gentle way with worried younger readers, who might be reassured that the animals know how to get ready in order to stay safe.

The spreads are available in English or Spanish, and English or Spanish audio versions are available. (You’ll have to flip the pages yourself in time with the audio.)

To those of you in the path of the storm, we send our thoughts and best wishes.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 26th, 2011 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Science, Web sites, Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I hope this information was helpful.  Please post any other hurricane resources for children that you know of.  Stay stafe!