What Do You See in the Clouds?

Just for fun -- What do you see?

HINT - This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count!

Scroll down AFTER you guess.

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I see a bird. Do You?

Our Cloud Diorama

Mama Voyager came up with a great idea to help the little voyagers remember the kinds of clouds they have been studying. A Cloud Diorama! We worked together on this at the end of the day. It was a great way to reinforce the names and kinds of clouds: 

High - Middle - Low - Fair Weather - Precipitation Clouds

Cirrus - Stratus - Cumulus - Nimbocumulus

We covered the edges of a big cereal box with foil tape.

(Did you know they made this? I didn't!)

Spiderman helped glue in the colored paper for the background.

  

While Rosetta printed cloud labels...

 Saralina traced the cloud names in the Mini Cloud Helper booklet.

Mama Voyager and Saralina used a sewing needle and thread to hang the clouds.

What do you think of the finished diorama?  And what do you think the first thing the little voyagers wanted to do with it? Why, make a puppet show, of course! We shall see.  

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I tried re-googling to find the cloud diagram we used to cut out the cloud forms for the diorama, but we googled that at Mama Voyager's house, and I can't seem to repeat the search results on my computer.

But I did find come cool cloud reference charts:

From Keeping it Easy and Simple - This one could be used as a reference to draw your own clouds.

This one from Our Family of Flowers would make a great bookmark! (They have a GREAT weather/cloud post!)

If you want your child to have a little more practice identifying cloud heights, you might use this nifty worksheet from Have Fun Teaching.

Hi Ho A Cloudy Oh!

It Looked Like Spilt Milk

Today we revisited the book, "It Looked Like Spilt Milk," with Saralina taking charge of the read aloud this time. 

 

This is the perfect book for beginner readers (kindergarten) like her  because the text is repetitive with a limited number of new words. Super job, Saralina! 

After Saralina finished reading us the story, we went outside to check out the clouds for inspiration, then came back in to do our SPILT MILK art project. The little voyagers made their own Spilt Milk mini-books.

Using blue card stock, white acrylic paint and Q-tips, the little voyagers got to work on their clouds.

 One of Rosetta's Clouds - Is it a star, a butterfly?

Spiderman is happy with how his turned out!

While they were busy painting spilt milk clouds, Mama Voyager typed up the text from the book, leaving blanks for the little voyagers to fill in, once they decided what their "clouds" looked like.

And here are their books, all finished. These turned out so cute, and all three of the little voyagers really enjoyed this activity, especially Spiderman. Because Spiderman is only three, he told me what his looked like and I did the writing for him. Both girls, however, wrote in their own words.

I am sure the little voyagers will be asking to do a similar activity again, and soon!

Cloud Viewing and Classification

free

 

Clouds Mini-Helper from Homeschool Bits via Currclick (free download)

This was our second attempt at the Cloud in the Bottle. This time we used a smaller bottle, hot water (rather than cold) and dropped the burning stick (still no matches) into the bottle: 

Then Rosetta quickly put the lid back on....

 And, as you can see...

A cloudy bottle, but still not that impressive, at least to us! 

 
Quick! Time to move on to something else -- The Cloud Viewer:

E is for EXPLORE! - Awesome website, with great learning activities made this free version of the Cloud Viewer. We printed one for each little voyager, cut out the middle, then laminated them for durability.

Now, as you can see, not a lot of clouds in the sky when I took this picture, but as the day went on, the clouds increased. The little voyagers went outside to observe the clouds several times in between our various projects.

This is a handy little cloud viewer/classifier, even for adults!  

To help us remember which clouds are which, Mama Voyager found  a CLOUD song:

This song by Cynthia Sherwood is kind of catchy (Hi Ho A Cloudy Oh) - It is sung to the tune of A Farmer in the Dell. Click for a larger image, or go to Super Teacher Worksheets.

Here are a few of the clouds we saw today:

Hi Ho A Cloudy Oh!

Cloud in a Bottle

The little voyagers are learning about clouds as part of their DIY Meteorologist badge.

We tried a "cloud in a bottle" experiment to learn about cloud formation last week, but we weren't happy with the outcome:

Lighting a stick on fire to create smoke...

When the stick didn't work, we tried paper. 

Squeezing the bottle, then releasing to get smoke sucked down inside...

And a little bit of a cloud. We could actually see it better than it appears in this photo, 

but I was still a bit disappointed, and I think the little voyagers were, too.

If I can find some matches, we might try another version of this experiment.

In the meantime, how about some cloud poetry?

This first poem is a hint for our art project for today. 

Does it remind you of It Looked Like Spilt Milk?

This poem by William Wordsworth is short, but lovely.

 

This final cloud poem is by Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

Long, but nice!