I had been saving this science project for a rainy day, so when the rain kept us inside this morning, we had lots of fun making a cloud in a jar! Each child started out with a jar about half to 2/3 full of water. Then I went around and added shaving cream to the top of each jar. I gave them each a dropper (probably my favorite tool for fine motor practice) and set out some trays of colored water to share. They started drip-dropping the water onto the top of their clouds....
...and when their clouds finally got full enough of water - that's when the magic happened! It was such a fun, intriguing way for them to learn that rain is what we get when the clouds get full of water. And they were so excited everytime they made a new "rainstorm"!
Almost all I heard for a good 5 to 10 minutes were excited shouts of "Hilary, come look at mine!" "Hilary, come see mine now!" :)
They all remained completely absorbed in their project for at least as long as it took them to get to this point... :)
It gets hard to see "rain" in a jar like that. :) Since we are pretty used to playing in shaving cream around here, I told the kids it was fine to scoop out their clouds and play with them once they were done making it "rain."
So most of them dug right in, scooped out their shaving cream "cloud" and kept coloring and exploring them right on the tabletop. It was a very fun and useful project to occupy us on this rainy day!
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