Last Week's Learning March 23rd-27th

Water Travels in a Circle

Water travels in a circle… YES it does,

Water travels in a circle… Yes it does!

Water goes up with evaporation,

Then it makes condensation, and comes down in precipitation,

Yes it does! (Sung by Ethan Mitchell)

Last week’s sunny, cloudy, windy and rainy weather assisted Ethan Mitchell with real life experiences and proved the above lyrics to be true after he introduced the rhythmic tune to peers!  Vermont’s fickle springtime weather is perfect for investigating the WATER CYCLE and CUMULUS and NIMBUS CLOUDS! Miraculously a large, puffy CUMULUS CLOUD floated into the classroom meeting space and introduced itself to scholars using a first and last name; CUMULUS CLOUD. As pretend water droplets (student’s bodies) evaporated and were absorbed into the large and puffy

cloud it turned dark and grew in size to form a NIMBUS CLOUD and raindrops!

  

Students transform into water droplets and gather to form a NIMBUS CLOUD!

A PRESCHOOL CLOUD FACT:

• Clouds fill up with water and when the cloud is filled with water, it becomes heavy and the water falls to the ground.

Cloud Watchers also performed the following 3 experiments;

Experiment 1

• Shape a cotton ball into a cumulus "cloud" shape.
• Using an eyedropper, drop rain water onto the cotton ball (cumulus cloud). Continue dropping drops until it starts to "rain" from the "cloud."
• Add more water via the eyedropper until more "rain" falls onto a paper towel.

Experiment 2

• Fill a balloon with air to make it puffy and light (a cumulus cloud)
• Fill a balloon with water to make it big and heavy (a nimbus cloud)   

RAFI compares the weight and size of a CUMULUS and NIMBUS CLOUD

Experiment 3

• Fill a transparent cup half full of water and add shaving cream to form a cumulus cloud.
• Begin to add water drops to the cumulus cloud until it transforms into a nimbus cloud
• Observe raindrops below the nimbus cloud as they fall

 

Mathematicians also used cloud dough to shape and count raindrops. As more rain drops were created and were ADDED onto cumulus clouds… heavy nimbus clouds appeared!

  

After reading Eric Carl’s book, Little Cloud and Charles Shaw’s story, It Looked Like Spilt Milk, writers authored a page and illustrated CLOUD SHAPES!