Learning about Clouds

The kids decided that they wanted to study meteorology, so we spent a week learning about the weather, mostly focusing on clouds. Here's what we did...

We completed a lesson about cloud identification in Mystery Science (www.mysteryscience.com) and then found this great illustration in "Nature Anatomy" by Juia Rothman.  The twins (almost 7) now enjoy identifying clouds and predicting the weather whenever we go outside.

Even little brother H (age 4.5) had fun drawing pictures of different types of clouds.  He's starting to participate more in his older sisters' lessons and activities.  I really want H to develop a love for learning and choose to do more and more "school" with us (I'm trying the "inspire not require" philosophy with him at this age.)

Our poem of the week was "White Sheep" by Christina Rossetti.  The girls did some dictation, memorized the poem, and then performed it for the family (with a toy microphone).

We had perfect timing with this science unit, as last month's Ask magazine was all about clouds.  I read aloud some of the articles about how clouds are formed, and the twins took turns reading facts about clouds, as well.  The magazine included an experiment for creating a "cloud in a bottle", which was everyone's favorite activity:

I put steaming hot water in a glass jar and added some smoke (by lighting a small piece of paper on fire and blowing it out).  Then the kids put a lid on the jar that was filled with ice (I put water in the lid and stuck it in the freezer).  They watched anxiously as tiny droplets condensed around the smoke to form a cloud.

The kids lifted up the lid to release our cloud (which the wind promptly blew away).  I think they were hoping that it would look more like this one (created by Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde), but there were no complaints:

The photo above is from this article:  http://techland.time.com/2012/11/01/best-inventions-of-the-year-2012/

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