It’s autumn, and for the past few weeks we had some clouds in the sky, which is rare for sunny San Diego. This inspired me to teach the kids about clouds and the water cycle. The first activity, demonstrates how cumulus clouds get heavy with water and produce rain. It is simple but fun: a shaving cream “cloud” floats on a cup of water, representing cumulus cloud. The kid drizzle food coloring on top of the cloud and watch how it rains into the water “atmosphere”. For the second activity I couldn’t resist making Ivory soap clouds in the microwave. Heating ivory soap in the microwave results in the bubbling of the soap bar into a cloud of soap with fluffy appearance of a cumulus cloud. However
School year started, and winter is around the corner. It's time to sow seeds and learn how plants germinate and grow. In addition to starting our winter vegetable garden, we also made a couple of fairy gardens. This is a favorite activity, so this year I chose to use two plastic water tables for our fairy garden. After a quick trip to the local crafts store to buy small wooden items and plenty of stickers, and a bag of mixed beans from the grocery store, we were ready to start. The stickers were great, because they are easy for small hands to handle and they readily adhere to the wood. Last year I used Elmer’s glue and plastic flowers, which ended up being too challenging for the young kids.
