Week 21 Day 3

Book choices for today:

The Cloud Book   Tomie dePaola
What Clouds Do for Fun   Daniel Errico
It Looked Like Spilt Milk   Charles G. Shaw
Clouds   Erin Edison
Clouds   Anne F. Rockwell
The Story of the Orchestra   Robert Levine

Science: (first circle)

Need for lesson – Types of Clouds three-part matching card set.

Science 49

Today we are going to talk about clouds. We have learned about the water cycle. What is the water cycle? We get rain when tiny droplets of water in the clouds join together to make bigger and bigger drops and finally the drops get too heavy to float in the air, so they fall to ground as rain. You may have noticed that some clouds look white in the sunshine, while other clouds are gray, they are so thick that light from the sun cannot shine through the clouds. There are three main groups of clouds. Cirrus are wispy clouds that appear high in the sky. Cumulus clouds are those fluffy white clouds you often see on a sunny day. Stratus clouds are smooth sheets of gray cloud that stay close to the ground and usually bring rain or drizzle.

Cirrus means “curl of hair”, cumulus means “heap”, and stratus means “layer”. We have talked about snow before, remember snow can fall from the same gray clouds that usually bring rain. Snow will fall instead of rain when the air is below freezing, so the water vapor in clouds turns into tiny ice crystals. As the ice crystals fall, they bump into each other and stick together to form snowflakes.

Let’s look at some other types of clouds in addition to the three main ones we talked about.

Types of Clouds
Types of Clouds (MontessoriPrintShop.com)

Additional Works:

How Many Drops – Children work with a partner to count how many drops of water to fill different size raindrops.

Raindrop Experiment
Raindrop Experiment
Raindrop Experiment
Raindrop Experiment

 Art:

Cloud Lacing – Have cloud shapes that are hole punched all around the edge and yarn that has one end glued to make it stiff. Tie the other end of the yarn to a cloud shape and the children can lace around the cloud with the yarn.

Spilt Milk Clouds – Children place white paint drops on one side of a blue paper and then fold it in half, pressing down, to create a cloud shape.

Cloud Lacing
Cloud Lacing
Spilt Milk Art
“Spilt Milk” Art

Songs/Poems:

Five White Clouds
Five white clouds went out to play
Dancing in the sky one day
Wind came by and began to blow
One little cloud said, “Here I go!”

Four little clouds went out to play
Dancing in the sky one day
Wind came by and began to blow
One little cloud said, “Here I go!”

Three little clouds went out to play
Dancing in the sky one day
Wind came by and began to blow
One little cloud said, “Here I go!”

Two little clouds went out to play
Dancing in the sky one day
Wind came by and began to blow
One little cloud said. “Here I go!”

One little cloud went out to play
Dancing in the sky one day
Wind came by and began to blow
One little cloud said, “Here I go!”

Cloud Poem Props
Cloud Poem Props

I made these clouds for the children to act out as we say the poem. A child plays the part of the wind and blows the clouds away. I also like to have each child that is holding a cloud say the line, “Here I go!”

Music: (second circle)

Need for lesson – A wind instrument if possible, the book “The Story of the Orchestra”, CD player, and pictures of woodwind Instruments.

Music 4

Today we want to talk about the woodwind family of instruments. There are two main types of woodwind instruments. The reed family and the flute family. These instruments are played by blowing air through a mouthpiece, which is the wind, and then you open and close the holes with your fingers to change the pitch of the sounds made. Let’s look at some pictures of instruments that belong to the woodwind family of instruments.

In an orchestra the woodwind instruments played are the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon.

Demonstrate your instrument and if possible allow children to try it.

Woodwind Instruments
Woodwind Instruments

Continue with the next section in the book about the woodwind instruments and play tracks of your choosing to enhance the musical instruments discussed.

Additional Works:

Coloring Pages

Coloring Pages
Coloring Pages

Song (CD) choices for today:

Clouds   Learning Through Music