Exploring the Weather (Storms)

Last week on the morning after a big storm, I read a beautiful book by Patricia Polocco called "Thunder Cake."  It is about a girl who is afraid of thunder so her grandma makes Thunder Cake with her. The little girl has to do many brave things such as gather eggs from "mean ol' Nellie Peck Hen" and get milk from "old Kick Cow." They count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder because they have to have the cake in the oven when the storm is right above their house in order for it to be REAL Thunder Cake.

When we finished the story, I showed them the recipe in the back of the book. Of course, they wanted to make thunder cake! I showed them the weekly weather forecast and we didn't see any more thunder in the forecast so....the kids came up with the idea of creating a storm when the cake is cooking! They wanted a storm cloud with lightning and rain, flashlights, and drum-type items to create the thunder. And so, a new inquiry was born!

We started out by reading books about storms and looking at pictures of storms on the promethium board. We organized what we learned on a circle map. 

We created a chart using describing words about tornados to tie it in with Writer's Workshop.

Next, the kids started working on our storm.   I set out materials inspired by a rain cloud that I saw over at http://ljpskindergartenteam.blogspot.ca. This creator of this blog is amazing and a huge inspiration to me! 

We set about creating a storm!  Some kids strung blue, gray and clear beads to make some rain.

Some strung gold beads onto gold pipe cleaners to create lightning.

Some worked on creating the storm cloud.

When the parts of our storm were finished, we connected the rain and lightning to the cloud.

I hung the storm cloud on the tree that bends over our exploration table.  They did such a great job!  It is 100% created by kids, which explains why it looks so amazing!  Kid-did is always best!

Now we are ready to make Thunder Cake!