Rain, Clouds, and Bubbles

Summer is here and camp is already bursting with fun!

This week we spent some time exploring rain, clouds, and bubbles.  

Monday was a bit of rainy day, so the solar prints planned for the day did not happen, but in it's place we had fun making a little rain cloud for the classroom.

This was inspired by a picture I saw on pinterest.

The children simply beaded as much as they wanted to on a string, and then it was threaded through a cloud made of cotton batting.  Simple, fun, and great for their fine motor skills.

We continued our discussion about rain with a science experiment.  The children were given a cup of water, and then sprayed shaving cream on top to make their "clouds."  I talked about how when clouds become too heavy with water, they release that water and it starts to rain.  It is a basic, simple description that the children understand.  To demonstrate how this works, they dropped blue water into their clouds.  At first it sits for a little bit in the cloud of shaving cream, but then it slowly releases the colored water, very similar to rain.

You can tell some really got into making their shaving cream clouds.

After they felt that they had made it rain enough, they then took their experiments over to the sensory table and poured in their solutions for more exploration and fun.

Later that afternoon some children created a cloud on the plexi-glass easel.  This entertained them for about 45 minutes.  They sprayed the shaving cream on the easel and dove right in.

Some pictures of little hands at work from the opposite side of the easel.

A little friend catching me taking pictures on the other side of the easel.

Even the clean up was fun.  They simply took the squeegees and were able to clean off most of the shaving cream unassisted. 

By the end of the week the sun was out and the weather was perfect, to celebrate we explored bubbles.

My assistant had the wonderful idea of having the children go inside a bubble, so of course we had to do it!

We used half bubble solution and half water and Seventh Generation dish soap, it was a success!

At first we helped the children, but soon discovered  that they were much better at bubble making than the adults.

Success!  How neat to be sitting inside of a giant bubble!

And fortunately no one was afraid of a bubble as was the case of this monster in the story that was shared.  It was a very fun week of camp, can't wait to see what next week will bring.