Clouds

Today we learned all about clouds.  We read a story about clouds.  Did you know that there are different types of clouds?  We learned that there are names for different types of clouds, such as stratus, nimbus, and cumulus.  Ask your child what a cloud is made up of tonight.  Our story taught us that clouds are made up of water and ice.

After learning about clouds, we did a science experiment to learn about why it rains.  We filled a clear jar with water.  Then we put a shaving cream cloud on top.  Miss McCabe dropped food coloring "water" on top of the cloud.  When there were a lot of drops and the cloud was full, it began to rain!  The children were fascinated by this experiment.  They requested to do it over and over again.  We did it using different colors.  Then they saw how the colors mixed after it finished "raining."  This is a simple experiment you could even do at home!  The children learned that it rains when a cloud gets so full of water that it cannot hold any more!

Next we visited centers.  The children either played a weather beginning sounds game, made a "spilt milk" picture, or tried blowing different objects across a table.

Then we played in the classroom.  The sensory table was still in high demand.  There was also a lot of creativity going on in our classroom today!  The children were enjoying cutting out scraps of paper and making neat projects out of it - one student even made a huge owl in a tree!  Some children also chose to make kites with Mrs. DeKeyser during playtime.

After snack, the children requested to do the raining cloud experiment again.  This time we predicted how many raindrops it would take before the rain would come down.  Then each child got a turn to choose one color and put one raindrop on the cloud.  It took a lot of raindrops to make our cloud rain!  We had to count above 20!

On the carpet, we read the story Little Cloud by Eric Carle.

Then we reviewed shapes while playing a cloud shape game.  Although the children know their shapes well, it is important to go back and review them regularly.  If the children don't use those words often, they tend to lose them.  Take some time tonight to go over the shapes, especially rectangle and triangle, to see if your child remembers them.  Shapes are still assessed on the 4K Progress Reports!

We also heard about Brownie's adventures from last weekend!

Tomorrow Altrusa will come visit and read us a story that we get to keep.  It will be their last visit for this school year.

Sorry about the mixed-up pages in the letter Uu booklets.  I suspect that Mrs. DeKeyser was just trying to play a late April Fools' trick on us! :)

Have a great evening!