Hello everyone! I’m so excited to see all you kiddos today! We are going to have so much fun on our hike, looking for some interesting things in nature. Today, we are going to learn about something that we see up in the sky, it’s big and white and sometimes round of puffy shaped. What is it? Clouds!
Letter of the day- C
What are clouds?
Did you know that clouds are a collection of tiny, tiny water droplets way high up in the sky?
How do clouds form?
All air around us has water in it. Did you know that? The water in the air gets warm. It starts to rise up. It goes so high in the air, but way up high the air is actually colder. There are also little air dust particles up high in the air that the water vapor clings onto. When they all clump together, then clouds are formed. When there gets to be too much water in the cloud, then it rains!
Science experiment-
2 Plastic bags
2 cups
water
Let’s put some water in this cup and place the cup in this plastic bag. One of the bags we will leave open and the other, we will close. What do you think is going to happen? Let’s see what happens when we get back from our hike and talk about it.
Clouds are really cool. They can tell us things! Did you know that you can tell what kind of weather is coming by looking up in the sky at the clouds?
- Long, wispy cirrus clouds= pleasant or fair weather. Usually indicate a change in the weather in the next 24 hours
- Cirrostratus clouds= long, sheet like cloud that covers entire sky, but sun or moon can still be seen through them. They usually indicate there will be rain or snow in the next 12 to 24 hours
- Puffy, cotton ball Cumulus clouds= good weather!
- Thick, grey Stratus clouds= that is what we have in Seattle almost all winter. These clouds mean a little drizzle here or there
Let’s all lie on our backs and look at the clouds for a bit. What shapes to do you? Do you think the clouds are high or low? Are the moving fast or slow? Are the white or grey?
Story- Drippy the raindrop (cutouts of drippy, salty, tree, cloud, and sun)
Once upon a time there was a raindrop named Drippy (picture of drop of water). Drippy was having fun! He was doing his favorite thing in the whole wide world- lying on his back floating in the ocean. He looked up at his good old friend Mr. Sun, who had just come up (hold up picture of sun). Mr. Sun rose higher and higher and Drippy got hotter and hotter!
Just then, Drippy saw a big, dark cloud moving across the sky. “I wish I could go up to that cool looking cloud and cool down a bit!”
All of a sudden, Drippy felt himself rising up into the air! He was evaporating! Can we all saw evaporate together? EVAPORATE!
He landed softly on a huge, fluffy cloud. There were thousands of other drops of water too. One of the drops of water called out to Drippy, “Ahoy there! I’m Salty!” (hold up picture of another drop of water with captain hat on).
“I’m Drippy! Nice to meet you. Where are we headed?”
“We are going right toward those mountains over there and it looks like a storm is a brewing. If things get rough, just abandon ship. Jump right off the cloud and toward the earth” Salty said.
After awhile, things did start getting rough. Drippy got ready to jump. 1-2-3-JUMP! Drippy was raining now! He fell with millions of other raindrops down toward the forest near the mountains.
Drippy landed right on a tree (show picture of tree with roots). He slid down on leaf onto a branch and then down the trunk. Down, down, down he slid down the trunk and into the soil near the tree’s roots. Wow! What an adventure we was having. When we reached the soil, he found lots of other water drops there too. They were filling up the soil pores. He sunk deeper into the soil and into an underground stream. Then, guess what happened? The underwater stream came out of the ground as a spring!! The stream was now above ground. The stream eventually led him out into the ocean again!
Drippy leaned back, floating on his back and looked up at his good friend Mr. Sun again. “Hello there, Mr. Sun!” What an adventure I’ve had! I’ve been through the water cycle. Can you all say WATER CYCLE? I’m learned so much and seen so much of our beautiful earth. What a wonderful world we live in!”
The end
Craft-
Paper clouds
Yarn
Paper rain droplets
Give each child a cloud, three pieces of yarn and three rain droplets. Let them color the rain droplets or cloud if they would like. Have them glue the cloud down on another piece of paper, hang yarn from cloud, then attach the rain droplets.
Song- to the tune of “the farmer and the dell”
The clouds are floating by
the clouds are floating by
heigh-ho, just watch them go
the clouds are floating by
They’re sometime high or low
they’re sometime high or low
heigh-ho, just watch them go
they’re sometimes high or low
Clouds move fast or slow
clouds move fast or slow
heigh-ho, just watch them go
clouds move fast or slow
