Saturday 25 August 2012

A Story About Clouds (Continuation to the How We Teach Science Through Stories)

Today we conducted our third science storytelling session, and the theme for the day was clouds.

We began by reading "The Little Cloud" by Eric Carle. The children enjoyed looking at the pictures in the book, and kept guessing what the little cloud would turn into on the next page. After the story was over, we looked at a picture that explained how clouds are formed. 

But, seeing is believing, so next stop was the experiment table. We poured boiling hot water in a glass, and then covered it with another glass bowl. In the glass bowl, we glued little bits of cotton, that were our clouds. When the glass was covered with the bowl, the vapor from the hot water started rising up. It would take a while for the cotton to become moist with the vapor, so we left the glass on the table and proceeded to the third activity.

We handed the Science Story Log Sheet to each child. In the sheet were pictures of different cloud types. The children clipped the sheets onto their clipboards and we went over to the terrace to observe the clouds in the sky. 

It was a bright sunny day, and the children observed the different types of clouds in the sky and compared them to the pictures in the worksheet. They circled the pictures that were the same as what they saw in the sky.

After we returned back to class, we looked at the glass with hot water. The vapor from the water had risen up and settled on the inside surface of the glass bowl. We peeled off the cotton from the inside of the bowl and felt that it was moist. 

We concluded that the suns's rays heat water in the water bodies; the water vapor rises up in the sky and when it cools it forms water droplets. Many such water droplets come together to form clouds!

The final wrap-up activity for the day was to make our own cloud art. We mixed equal parts of glue and shaving cream in a bowl, and handed it to the children to play with. The children had a fun time spreading the mixture on paper and making their own little clouds!

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