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Making Rain

We just finished our first week of the October box of Mother Goose Time. This Month is all about Weather and Changing Seasons. Lots of good science opportunities and discoveries are waiting for us this month. I made it a point to utilize the STEAM Stations section in the Teacher Guide this time. This is an added feature this year that I am really loving. In the pages before the actual lesson plans there is a 2 page spread with a STEAM Station idea on it for each day. It includes science, nature, dramatic play and sensory ideas to give a fun hands on aspect to the days activities. This week we used a fan to test what would happen to various materials when held up to the fan. We got to see what would happen with different weights of objects, did they fly far, float slowly to the ground, or flutter to the ground. Did they blow far away or just a short distance. We also tried different fan speeds and observed what would happen if the fan was at a higher speed.

Another STEAM Station was playing with Snow Dough. Using a mixture of flour, oil, and glitter I made snow dough for my kids to explore with. They loved this activity and played with it off and on all week. They used it to make snow balls, snow men, and then they created nature scenes using little toy animals.

Our favorite STEAM Station this week though was the Heavy Clouds exploration. I did this during the cloud day and we learned so much. We started off by reading several library books about clouds and weather.


After learning about clouds from the books I got out the supplies for the Heavy Clouds experiment. I put some water in a glass and then topped it with a cloud of shaving cream. I asked my son what he thought it looked like and he immediately responded by saying clouds. Most likely thanks to all the cloud books we just read. I took the opportunity to show him how the clear water was like the sky and the shaving cream was like the clouds.


I then showed him the blue water in the other cup and asked him what he thought would happen if we added some to our cloud and made it heavy with blue water. He said he didn't know what would happen so I asked him if he remembered what the cloud book said happens when clouds get heavy with water. He said they rain. I then explained to him how he should drop the blue water into the cloud and I let him at it.


It took a little while for anything to happen and I believe that is because I used a lot of shaving cream. However I do think that was ok because it really gave him plenty of time to add blue water and make it feel like the cloud was really getting heavy with our blue rain water. After a few tries the blue water finally rained down from his cloud and he was so excited. 


This was such a neat experience and we repeated the experiment again because it was so much fun. I love that it was so visual and you could actually see how this miniature cloud worked. This is definitely not a concept he will soon be forgetting. 

Once we were finished with this STEAM Station we did the Cloudy Art activity located in the teacher guide. I felt that ending the lesson by doing something creative would help to make the experience even more memorable. For this project we used the droppers and different consistencies of white paint to make a cloudy day picture. My son enjoyed testing which consistency paint worked best in the dropper, and my daughter added cut paper clouds to her picture.


We ended the day by going outside to look at clouds and see if we could identify what kind of clouds they were. It was such a beautiful day. 



*Mother Goose Time has generously provided this curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*






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