Exploring the Weather- The Sun

Our Weather Inquiry has been morphing into a sky inquiry as time goes on. The kids have been investigating the clouds, but one day this week, there were no clouds in the sky to investigate! One of the girls piped up, "Well, I wonder lots of things about the sun! Can we explore that?" Um...yes!!! So we came up with things they had in their Schema already about the sun, and what they wondered. They wondered how it moved across the sky and what what it was made of. One child said it made energy!

We investigated by reading books about the sun and watching videos about the sun. This began our new learning, but now we wanted to see how it worked! We started with the concept of heat energy. We put chocolate chips in little muffin cups and the kids explored them and documented what they noticed and what they were going to do with them. They also made predictions as to how the chips would change. 

We put them in the sun and observed the changes caused by the sun. While we waited, we felt the sun on our skin and some kids noticed how hot the benches and play equipment were.

After about 10 minutes, the chips were melted! We discussed the changes caused by the heat energy. The heat from the sun changed a solid into a liquid! We grabbed some pretzel sticks and decided to enjoy our experiment even more!

Of course, we went back in and documented the results of our fun experiment.

We will continue this inquiry by seeing what else the sun can do, how it helps us and how it moves across the sky.

Thunder Cake

After creating our storm cloud, we gathered ingredients for thunder cake and items needed for a storm. The kids brought in flashlights for lightning and jars, buckets, frisbees and drums to bang on to create thunder. From our playground, we collected a thick dried grass that looked like skinny bamboo and sounded like rain when tapped together, along with pencils to tap together and a rain stick to create the sound of rain. All of these ideas came from the kids! They explored, noticed things and collected things they felt sounded like rain and thunder!

We mixed the ingredients to create the cake, put it in the oven, and while it was cooking, created our storm so that it could be true Thunder Cake. The flashlights would flash, we counted to ten and the thunder would roll. The flashlights would flash, we counted to nine and the thunder would roll... We did this until the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled at the same time! It was then we knew our Thunder cake would be perfect!

The kids frosted their cake and added the strawberry on top. We had our doubts about a chocolate cake that had tomatoes in the recipe, but we all agreed it was fabulous! And of course, the thunder was the secret ingredient!  I have added the recipe below from Patricia Polacco's amazing book!  I hope you enjoy it!

Thunder Cake!

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together one at a time:
1 cup shortening
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, separated
( blend yolks in. Beat whites until they are stiff, then fold in.) 

1 cup cold water
1/3 cup pureed tomatoes

Sift together:
21/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup dry cocoa
11/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Mix dry mixture into creamy mixture. Bake in two greased and floured 8
1/2 inch pans at 350 degree for
35 to 40 minutes during a thunder storm. 

Frost with chocolate butter frosting. Top with
strawberries. 

(We made them in cupcake pans and cooked them for about 12 minutes)

ENJOY!!!

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!

Exploring the Weather (Wind)

I took the kids outside with our science notebooks to observe the weather on this nice spring day to see if they would be interested in exploring it further. We sat in a group and discussed what they noticed. They noticed the new flowers, and the wind. They were fascinated by how the wind was moving the clouds and making the flowers bend. I asked if they wanted to explore the wind further and of course they did! They started out by documenting what they noticed as we were sitting outside.

We read some books about the wind, watched a great video of a giant kite festival in Guatemala, and used the promethium board to explore tools that measure the wind. They were very excited to make some tools of their own! We made wind socks and took them outside to find out what they told us. They realized wind socks could tell them if the wind was blowing hard or soft, and what direction the wind blew.

We also made wind vanes and took them outside to see what they told us. I think the documentation done by the kids says it all!

The wind was blowing so hard, it bent most of our wind vanes! The kids were using tier III vocabulary words when describing it outside, calling it a gale and saying they wished it was just a breeze!

Next we will need to organize our data to show what we now know about the wind after our explorations and investigations.

Nature Inspired Art (Loose Parts)

I set up a provocation for the kids to make some art with our loose parts inspired by art created by Andy Goldsworthy. I surrounded the area with photos of his work and work created by kids their age to inspire them.

We discussed how they needed to either create a plan in their head or on paper before they started. So far they have done a good job of creating a plan in their head. This is to keep them from throwing the loose parts into a random pile.  Here are some examples of what they have created.

Some are documenting what their art looks like since they can't take it home.

                 

Completed Marble Mazes and Marble Runs

Here are the finished marble mazes and marble runs!  They did such a great job!  They collaborated, problem solved and were persistent when problems were hard to solve!

They were inspired by the big one to make smaller ones individually and put them out for everyone to play with!

They came up with the idea of using the tape roll to catch the marbles.

Learning Through Play Outside

I use to just watch the kids when they played outside to make sure no one got hurt and that they played nice.  Now I realize that their outside play contains important learning opportunities such as social skills, cooperation and problem solving! I am learning to grab onto these opportunities more and more!

These two were trying to create a teeter-totter with our logs, but it was not working out so well!  I loved watching them problem solve and work together to come up with a solution!

Now it works!