Weather Wonderful

March's theme is weather and what a perfect theme it was. We experienced so many of the elements as we learned about them, thanks to the crazy weather last month. We charted the weather each day, threw scarfs in the air to watch the wind throw them about, brought snow inside our classroom and played with it until it all melted, and sang about raindrops made of gumdrops.
Our favorite song was a rhyme we made up in a song-songy voice: "Five snowmen sitting in the sun. The temperature rose and away melted one.  Four snowmen...three snowmen...two snowmen...one snowman...and then there were none." We pretended to melt as we sang this. SO FUN. It also proved to be a great way to learn why things melt. What made it melt? The temperature rose!

It's hard to pick my favorite activities from this month because so many of them are worth re-doing (and sharing). Here are a few:

-We called this Hurricane Painting. We used spray bottles filled with watered down paint to spray at our easel. As the kids sprayed the easel, I turned a fan on the highest setting and held it up to them. The spray paint went everywhere. Really. Everywhere. There was even some half way across the room, but this was so much fun and totally worth cleaning up the mess. The pictures turned out pretty amazing, too! (Look at the hidden color mixing lesson! Yes, red and yellow do make orange!)

-This was our Tornado Art. We used empty glue bottles filled with paint. I only put a little paint in each one and refilled for each child because they empty out very quickly! The kids squeezed the bottles in large circles, really focusing on (gross motor) movements in their arms. The pictures were some of the coolest art I've ever done with kids. It was a blast to make, a great chance to do some movement art, and also turned out pretty fancy. We made prints of the art, placing another paper on top of a finished picture and gently rubbing it so we could have one copy for home and one copy for school.

-When we talked about thunderstorms, we used paper cut into cloud shapes to rub on ink pads. The colors blurred and left interesting ink lines on the paper. 

-This puffy paint cloud is another awesome cloud activity. No Time for Flashcards is a go-to resource for me, time and time again.

-Here's another one that I borrowed. (I used paint instead of shaving cream because we can't spray shaving cream around the kids.) We brought dollar store mirrors outside and painted the clouds that we saw in the reflection. We then used a shower squeegee to erase the picture so the next friend could have a turn. We did this on a very cloudy day, but are super excited to do it on a more sunny day when we can see the outlines of the clouds better.

-And last but not least, Painting with Ice was great to watch the ice melt and for arts sake. I used real water color paints and mixed them with water in ice cube trays, putting craft sticks in each cube. Last year, I did not use the craft sticks and everyone's hands were stained! This year the kids stayed interested longer, probably because their fingers weren't freezing!

So, what's in store for April? Celebrating our planet!