Wicked Pickles

We have finally finished up with clouds. We have talked about, looked at, researched and read about clouds till they are coming out our ears. OMG...as pretty as I think the sky is, and I am a sky person, I am tired of learning about clouds. BUT...here is the rest of what we have done.

The picklets have made a cloud lapbook. We took color copies of different clouds, printed out the cloud meanings, matched them up and glued them on. They aren't fancy nor pretty to look at, but will be a help when the picklets want to identify different clouds in the future.

Out of cottonballs and blue construction paper different cloud formations were made. Each picklet picked four of their favorite clouds and thus the cloud formation poster were made.

Talked about why the sky is blue. Did an experiment (can't remember the name of it) with a glass of water, a drop of milk and a flashlight. With the light shining through the milky water we could actually see the bluish tint.

Did an experiemnet with cottonballs to see if all clouds held the same amount of raindrops. In this experiment the picklets took 5 cottonballs. While one held the cotton ball, another one dripped water onto 1 by 1 and the other counted. We found that all clouds (at least all cotton balls) are NOT alike.

We also "made" a cloud. We took a jar of water, topped it with saran wrap and put ice cubes on the saran wrap. The outcome was condensation on the inside of the jar thus making it look like there was a cloud.

by the Wicked Picklets

Today we studied precipitation and the weather cycle.

I read Why Do We Have? Wind and Rain, Weather Patterns , On the Same Day in March: A Tour of the World's Weather, Can It Rain Cats and Dogs?: Questions and Answers About Weather (Question and Answer), and Weather Words and What They Mean aloud. There is nothing like snuggling together and reading.

Read pages 16-23 in Eyewitness Weather. Talked about the water cycle. Picklets worked on some vocabulary words pertaining to weather such as condensation and precipitation together. (They actually got along!)

Picklets made raindrops by taking mirrors that were in the freezer for an hour and breathing on them hard. The outcome was condensation that eventually became thick enough it dripped like a raindrop.

We made freezing rain. This was one of the favorites. Sweet picked a round rock from the rock garden and stuck it in the freezer. About an hour later we put it on a piece of waxed paper and the picklets took turns putting drops of water on the rock. The result: FREEZING RAIN!

We made a stove top water cycle. Freaken cool and just seeing what we have been talking about clicked for all three of them...it was awesome! We took 2 sauce pans, put one in the freezer and boiled water in the other. When the water was boiling the picklets took the frozen pot and held it over the boiling water and demonstrated the water cycle. Nothing like a fabricated cloud to explain the water cycle!

We saw how raindrops form. On a piece of waxed paper, the picklets dropped drops of water all over it. Then they picked up the waxed paper and tilted it to "form" bigger drops. This showed the difference in the size between the "drips" that are in the clouds and the "drops" that touch the ground.

Attempted to make a rainbow with the sun and a jar of water. It didn't work too well, though you can see some kind of color there.

We found the dew point by putting a thermometer in a glass of room temperature water. Ice cubes were added and stirred. We watched the glass until beads of water formed on the outside of the glass. We then read the thermometer and found the dew point was 40º.

We found the relative humidity with a homemade Psychrometer. We taped two thermometers to a cardboard box. One of the bulbs of the thermometer was wrapped with wet gauze. The picklets then pointed a fan on high to the thermometers. When the thermometers stopped dropping in temperature both thermometers were read. They then subtracted the wet on from the dry one and found the relative humidity on a chart. The relative humidity was: 62 .

While the fan was running and we were waiting for the temperature to stop falling it proved to be the perfect time to practice Darth Vader voices. Nothing like a good "Luke, I am your faaaather" to make learning fun!

Read pages 8-15 in Eyewitness Explorers Weather aloud. Talked about different cloud types and different layers of the atmosphere. Used Earth's Atmosphere to find temperatures in all the different layers from troposphere to exosphere. I read Weather Forcasting by Gail Gibbons aloud. We talked about making weather stations and how they are used.
Made a thermometer from alcohol and water. Tested different temperatures to see what difference it made.

Did experiment #149 in 200 Gooey, Slippery, Slimy, Weird and Fun Experiements by Janice VanCleave.. The nephoscope helped teach the picklets how meterologists determine wind direction in the upper air.

When we got back inside I gave the picklets a list of the cloud names and they looked up the definitions of the clouds and wrote them down. (Will make lapbook on clouds) ©2007WickedPicklesHomeschool

Let's face it. We all should learn about weather. We should learn about the atmosphere, the hemispheres, the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun, the different clouds, and precipitation. We should learn it all. What better way to learn about it than hands on activities?

Today's topic: Seasons

Why do the season's happen? What causes the change? Do all areas of the world experience the same kind of weather all the time? All good questions. What did we do to find out?

First, we watched a movie entitled The Reasons for the Seasons. (Description:Students are shown, through the use of computer animation, the scientific principles responsible for our planet's yearly cycle of seasons. The tilt of the earth's axis and the planet's orbit around the sun are discussed. Other planets in our solar system are compared to earth, as terms such as revolution and rotation are defined. In addition to exploring the seasons, topics covered include: the role leaves play in the survival of trees and plants, photosynthesis, the reasons for changing autumn colors as trees prepare for the winter, and the explanation for day and night.) This particular movie is from a pay site that is rather costly but you might want to check with them because they offer free access to homeschoolers in some states. \o/ \o/ http://www.unitedstreaming.com/ This particular movie had a quiz at the end of it. The picklets LOVE it when there is a quiz. They yell loud to be the first one to blurt out the right answer! Gotta love that.

Second, we read The Reasons for the Seasons by Gail Gibbons. We love Gail Gibbons books. They are so well written. We stopped on each page and talked about the tilt of the earth, the rotation around the sun and using a globe and light demonstrated how the earth moves. It greatly helped the learning process. Hands on is great!

Thirdly, after watching the movie and reading the book, the picklets wrote a script (based closely on the book) and demonstrated the revolution of the earth and the tilt to show the 4 seasons.