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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Weather Week

This year we added "Weather Week" to our curriculum. We have always discussed the weather when we talked about summer, fall, winter and spring but it was really fun to have an entire week to talk about weather. Of course, during this week we had nothing but rain in the forecast, but we made do. but after being out of school on Monday for the Martin Luther King Holiday, we got busy Tuesday discussing RAIN! My husband had received a "sound machine" for Christmas (really, a sound machine when you live with ME!?!) but it did have the most wonderful rain sound programmed in it. So naturally, we had a background of "rain" all day on Tuesday. (There is also a wonderful "ocean" sound that we will use during our "Ocean and Water" week!) We also discussed rain and thunderstorms. I think there are a couple of students who aren't as afraid of thunder and lightening now. Our craft for Tuesday was simple, an umbrella with fingerprint rain drops.

Wednesday rolled around and we decided to heat up the classroom with our suns!

These actually turned out much nicer than I ever expected. The children loved talking about the sun and enjoyed hearing about the "giant ball of fire in the sky". Would you like to make a sun like ours? Start with a large round circle, we used thick poster board paper, and blob on some paint!

Cover with clear plastic wrap and SQUISH it!

We really like the feel of the paint under the clear plastic wrap!

Next we glued our sun to a piece of very large blue construction paper and added the sunrays!

Some children wanted BIG sunrays . . . . .


while others were happy with teeny, tiny rays.

either way, they were amazing!

By the time Friday rolled around we were ready for a fun weather snack! So, we decided to eat a rainbow! Yep, you heard me - we ate a rainbow! It was so fun and yummy. First we started with a rather funny looking template of a rainbow and started adding the color - with Fruit Loops of course!
It never ceases to amaze me how precise some children can be
while others are way to much LIKE ME! Either way, they were very, very yummy!

Our science experiment was all about the clouds! We started with a jumbo cotton ball (I had NO idea that cotton balls came in JUMBO) and a very small cup of water.

Next we put the cotton ball into the water, and squeezed it.




INSTANT RAIN! INSTANT FUN!


For our last science experiment we took a clear plastic cup and added plain water. We put a small amount of shaving creme on top. Then came the fun - a few drops of red and yellow food coloring. The food coloring slowly found it's way down into the water to make ORANGE rain! What fun! AND yes, we did it again with blue and yellow. And again, with red and blue! SUPER FUN!

Next week, my FAVORITE week - the SOLAR SYSTEM!!!! I hope you come back and as we rotate our way around the sun!

28 comments:

  1. Beautiful! A great mix of art, science, creativity and fun. :)

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  2. Great post! Love how you made it rain:-) Kerri

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  3. Love the mix of activities. I especially like the rain activity. I've included your post on my weekly favorites here: http://play2grow.blogspot.com/2011/01/weekly-favorites-for-january-30-2011.html

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  4. Thanks for the ideas! I have a preschooler and we gathered up a few friends and had our own weather week. We had a great time. I'll get the pictures up on my blog and send you a link.

    But I have a question: When you're doing a craft, do you make an example ahead of time? I like how your students all have different interpretations of what something (rainbow/sunrays/etc) should look like. I'm afraid with an example, some kids would just "copy" what I did rather than think it through on their own.

    That said, I'm getting ready to do a Noah's Ark craft in which we're going to use crunched up tissue paper as the water and put the ark and animals above it. I'm not sure my little one and her friends will get the idea of crunching and gluing the blue tissue paper without an example, but I don't want to lead them too much....because part of the idea is for them to think through that the boat would float on top of the water and the animals go on top of the boat.

    Any tips and thoughts?

    Thanks!

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  5. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments! I don't give the children an example, but I do explain to them what we are creating. I totally agree with you, I do not not want them copying MY work, I want their creations to be their own. I have actually done things that make people take a 2nd look, but they are done by preschoolers. I try very hard to give my students a sense of accomplishment. I am always telling them that art is a personal thing.

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