clouds

The last couple of weeks the kids and I have been learning about clouds and trying to learn to identify different clouds.  I found a great project to help identify cloud by making this viewer which I found on the blog Full of Great Ideas.

It is a great card to take outside hold up to the sky and look at the clouds and identify them. 

I found several experiments on line on how to make clouds at home, so we gave a couple of them a try

The first experiment was to use rubbing alcohol, a bicycle pump and soda bottle

Pour a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol into the bottle

coat the entire inside of the bottle with the rubbing alcohol

using a plug and a bicycle pump seal off the top and pump in air

Just so happened we had replaced an bicycle inner tube recently so I used that as our plug which needed to be held tightly down so no air would escape

After pumping in some air quickly unplug the top and  you get an instant cloud:)  You can find this experiment on several websites including Steve Spangler if you want to recreate it at home

Another simple experiment was to show how cloud let the water pass in the sky

Fill a bowl with plain water and layer shaving cream on top

Then using colored water slowing drizzle the mixture on top of the shaving cream and watch what happens below the surface.

It can take a little bit -- but eventually you can see a rain storm:)  

Lastly the kids created their oun cloud poster to helps us better identify the most common clouds in the sky

We used cotton balls and colored chalk to color certain clouds as it was needed

our cloud poster and the kids are getting very good at identifying clouds when outside.