Weather Bear meet Weather Cloud!

This week in school we learned all about weather, seasons, clouds and snow. 

We began by learning the word spectrum in relationship to color. Just like when we looked at size and scale with our pumpkins in the fall, we had to begin by identifying the opposites. We selected white and black as opposite colors and then lined up the shades of grey along the spectrum line. We then went to the worktables to mix up our own paint, and painted our weather clouds in stormy shades of grey.

We identified 5 weather conditions to display on our Weather Clouds: Sunny, Rainy, Snowy, Cloudy and Windy. 

Then it was time to "pinch & pull" some cotton to make the other side of our Weather Clouds fluffy and white.

Speaking of clouds, we learned about 3 distinctive cloud varieties and their basic shapes: puffy and rounded Cumulus clouds, wispy Cirrus clouds and solid blanket-like Stratus clouds. We made charts to show their shapes:

We took a look at how clouds are visible on our planet from outer space by enjoying this big Earth ball.  Everyone had a turn to hold the world :)

On Thursday we put the final touches on our Weather Clouds. They look great and are ready to hang up and point to the weather of the day:

We read a book by my friend Janice Dean, "The Weather Machine," about a little frog with a love of  forecasting. We talked about how the job of a meteorologist is to use scientific tools to predict the weather. Each of us made predictions about Friday's forecast. 

When Friday came no snow fell from the sky, but a bit did get sprinkled from our fingers as we made snowmen and winter tree crafts today. "These are SO cute!" said Ollie and Zadia. Yes they are!

We also enjoyed a new game this week related to weather and the seasons. Thank you to Audrey's parents for purchasing it from the wish list. When we played as a whole class, each student had a picture clue and had to match it to the correct season. This lead to us singing our class "Season Cycle" song quite a bit.

  (If you hear your child singing a butchered version of the classic James Taylor song that begins "Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall…" you have me to blame!!)

 No matter what the weather is like outside, tiny humans still love to dance and play! Here are a few fun shots from Movement this week when we played "How Do the Children Cross the Road?"

 Have a great weekend and enjoy the weather!