April Showers: Clouds and Rain

We've all heard the saying... 

April Showers, Bring May Flowers

So, let's use this spring board for some rainy lessons.

First Grade Parade shared a wealth of weather related lesson suggestions to make teaching about clouds interesting for young students.

Using the instructions from Apples and Papers your students can create a rainy day person. 

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Family Education explains the steps to creating rain in a bag.

Tobey Fields shared a thorough lesson plan about weather, focusing on rain and wind.  The plans include several books appropriate for teaching about rain.

Teach your children to water their own miniature gardens with a rain cloud like the one on A Little Learning for Two

At Another Day in Pre K the students watched as their teacher created a cloud in a bottle and released it into their classroom.

Somewhat Simple demonstrated the steps for creating a rain stick.

Better Kid's Care has a collection of rainy day finger plays to try with your preschoolers.

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Teaching with Ticia: Rain and Water puddles

I don't know if you guys get lots of rain in the spring, but in theory here in Texas we do.  It hasn't happened yet, but the idea for this came up last year when my boys noticed all the puddles we had after two weeks of solid rain.

Of course I thought of a science experiment to go with this.

Supplies: clear glass or baby food jar for each kid (as with most things it's more effective if they can each do this), dirt, pitcher of water

1.  First let your kid add dirt into the jar until it is about halfway full.  You want to make sure you still have room for the water to be added in.

Then look at the jar full of dirt, look at how there are little pockets of air that are empty, where water can go into.  What is going to happen when we pour the water?


If your kids are like mine there's a 50/50 chance they're going to say "You get mud!"  The other chance is they tell you there will be too much water for the dirt.

That's the answer you want.

2.  Slowly pour water in.  As you do you'll notice that the dirt becomes saturated with the water.  Once the dirt is saturated with the water the water starts to float on top of the dirt.  Thus forming puddles.

So, to get to the technical answer.  One way that you get puddles and flooding is if your ground has become too saturated with water for it to hold anymore water at this time.

Vocabulary word you probably introduced: saturated- to become full of something

Other posts I saw that could help with this idea:

An excellent example of flash flooding that we usually get in Texas

A great demonstration of water cycle- this was just linked up to my Science Sunday post this last week, and I thought it was so cool.

Further expansions or ideas:
Start a study of the water cycle
How does water get to your house (a great book for this is "Drip, Drip, Drop")
Obviously weather
What happens after it rains (can transition into plants growing)

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Baby, It's Cold Outside

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This Wondertime Wednesday edition is devoted to winter weather fun.  Hope you enjoy our round up of snowy, icy, and cold experiments and activities.

The following is a Science Lesson depicting how polar bears stay warm, from The Adventures of Bear.

Eperiement and explore with Monkeyin' Around's eye spy ice cubes.

For a fun and unique way to teach about how colors mix and change try Monkeyin' Around's colored ice experiment.

Here's a fun recipe from Dresses and Messes for snow ice cream! So yummy!

Playing with ice:  With this activity children learn the funny properties of water, They also learned that water thaws faster if we introduce the ice in water. 

Play, Explore, and Learn shares a great snow sculpturing activity to accompany the book Frozen Noses.

Our Adventures in Education just completed their snow and ice activities.  You will want to check out their creative way of creating their own ice crystals.

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Fall, The 4 Seasons, and Weather

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With all the changing colors of the leaves in both Katie's home state of Michigan, it got us thinking about studying the four seasons. We hope you like the activities we're rounded up, with a focus on autumn when possible. We've also added links to weather activites because learning about the seasons often goes hand in hand with talking about the different kinds of weather each one has.

Using a Venn Diagram is one of the easiest ways to compare and contrast many topics, including the different seasons!

For learners not ready for a diagram, we really like the seasonal sorts that Tired, Need Sleep did using clip art she found. Visit her blog for a link to that resource and

the one for this seasonal clothing sort they also did. Both are a great way to compare and contrast the four seasons and make what can be an abstract concept more concrete to for young minds.

Growing and Learning by Leaps and Bounds recently shared their nature Fall Discover Box. The contents can be used to sort, examine with a magnifying glass, and count.

That's where we also found a link to this great autumn table, originally from Isaacjklm's Blog. We love all the seasonal activities featured in the post. While you're there don't forget to check out their bean filled leaf art project and their tactile L is for Leaf project. They used crushed up leaves to make a textured L and l.

Play simple games with the printable gameboards: There are many different versions, here are some that are seasonally appropriate Autumn, Halloween, Pumpkin Patch, and Scarecrow. There are many different ways you could adapt these for any skill set you want to practice. Print out a board and then multiple copies to make your calling cards. For example the Pumpkin Patch features two main illustrations. Land on a pumpkin picture on the board, draw a card from the pumpkin stack. Answer the question on it, make all the pumpkin cards feature one content area like simple addition problems. Answer the question correctly you get to stay where you are. A wrong answer means going back to your last spot on the board.

Work together as a famiy to write a "Fall is" poem celebrating the unique characteristics of the season.

Weather or Not Seasons Change is a kindergarten lesson for your review.

The Changing Seasons, a lesson for 1st graders.

Scholastic has put together a lesson to explore vocabulary related to the changing seasons (Grades K-1)

Garden Activities in Four Seasons

The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons

Circle of Seasons by Gerda Muller

Around the Year by Tasha Tudor

Peepers, a children's picture book by Eve Bunting, is about two boys who come to appreciate the beauties of nature in the fall under the influence of the visiting leaf peepers.

Pieces: A Year in Poems & Quilts by Anna Grossnickle Hines

Weather

We love these great free monthly weather recording sheets! Make this an ongoing daily activity and after several months you'll be able to compare and discuss how the weather differs by season. It's also a great way to learn about graphing, counting, using more or less vocabulary etc.
KidzClub has a nice weekly weather diary with a picture you can glue in to represent the type of weather and space to write the weather word.

Here is a great resource full of handy blacklines. Page four is a very simple weather bar graph. There are also numeral and shape cards plus nice Numeral Dice Toss Bar Graphs for a simple game. Just roll a dice and record how many times you get each number on the dice. Other extras include weight cards, estimation with scoops, guess and check counting jars, snap/clap cards that multiples can used for making kinestetic patterns, with 53 pages there is a ton of good finds in this document!

Weather Themed Writing Paper, we also like the Rainy Weather Word List and Weather Word Alphabetizing Sheet found on the same page.

Great Weather Units full of Activities!
Little Giraffe's
Mrs. Cox
Teaching Heart

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