Letter of the Week: Cc

We finished our third week of school last week.  Though I don't blog about it, Arin does book work almost everyday (except Saturdays and sometimes Tuesdays).  She loves it and is flying through her books.  I am searching out what we will be doing as our next step once these books are complete .  We have not yet started regular science lessons, nor have we started Arin's piano lessons yet.  We did start Hoooked on Phonics late this past week and so far she seems to be enjoying it.  She still tolerates Explode the Code, but still does not love it.

Last week we worked on the letter Cc.  We had an extra special surprise for C week. Aunt Candace (my sister) came to stay with us for the week!  It is always a good time to see family.  Even though we had company, we continued with school.  We let our special guest of honor pick the theme of the week.  She picked clouds, because it was one of her favorite things to learn about when she was little.

I printed a capital letter C for each of the girls.  They painted this C by dipping a cotton ball in white paint and then dabbing it onto the C.  This was supposed to look like clouds.

Arin really liked painting with a cotton ball, so she asked if she could make another picture.  She dipped the cotton ball in the paint again and dabbed it onto the paper three times to make clouds.  Then, she drew a firetruck with people on it.  She only drew their heads because "you can't see people's bodies when they are on the truck".  She also drew a black road and even though you can't see it, she drew the yellow lines on the black road.  You also can't see it too well in the photograph, but there is green grass and one purple flower.

We read several cloud books this week.

Cloud Dance by Thomas Locker

Crazy About Clouds by Rena Korb

The Weather: Clouds by Terry Jennings

It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw

Little Cloud by Eric Carle

We also watched a couple of water cycle/cloud movies.

Earth Science for Children: All About The Water Cycle

Squibs (In the Clouds: Air, Weather, & Water)

The girls learned that there is water in the air and that clouds are formed by tiny droplets of water attaching themselves to dust particles.  They learned that some clouds also contain chunks of ice.  They learned that some clouds can move as fast as race cars!  They learned that clouds are named based on their shape and their location in the sky.  We didn't do any formal labeling cloud types or matching cloud types, but Aunt Candace pointed out the different types of clouds and named them (and sometimes quizzed Arin) whenever we were outside.

We did a cloud experiment in the kitchen.  This experiment comes from the book 365 Simple Science Experiments.  I boiled a kettle of water on the stove.  Once we saw steam, Aunt Candace held up a pie plate to catch the cloud.  The girls were able to see the cloud real well, even though you can not see it in this picture.  Once there was too much water in the cloud (all the water was gathering on the pie plate), it began to rain down.  I'm not sure that Arin really understood everything that was happening, but she was impressed enough to tell her daddy about it when he got home.

Our second experiment shows that there is water in the air all around us, even though we can't always feel it.  Again, this came from the book 365 Simple Science Experiments.  Arin filled an empty, clean tin can with ice cubes.  Then, she poured water into the can.  We had previously dyed the water blue.  We let the can stand on the counter for five or so minutes.  Once we returned to look at the can, we saw water droplets forming on the outside of the can.  The water was clear, which means that it did not come from the inside of the can, but rather from water already in the air. 

I think that cloud study is still a bit advanced for Arin, but as with all of her learning, we believe in exposing her to these things from a young age and reintroducing it with more depth as she gets older.