All About Clouds

Today, we learned all about clouds.  To start our lesson, I asked the students, "What do you think would happen if I put a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for 1 & 1/2 minutes?"  Well to their surprise, it made a man-made cloud!  The students LOVED passing the cloud around and feeling it with their own hands.  One student even said,"I have always thought that a cloud would feel like this!"  I shared a picture of our cloud with you below.

After starting our lesson with the cloud experiment, we then took a wonder walk outside to observe the clouds.  Unfortunately for us, it was a VERY foggy morning and we could not make out the different shapes of clouds.  We are going to try again tomorrow!

After returning inside, I showed the following video to help my kids learn some more facts about clouds.

We focused on the part of the video when the white and fluffy clouds turned into the dark, storm clouds.  I asked, "Why does it rain?"  Immediately the students responded, "Because the cloud fills up and can't hold any more water.  So it falls out."  I was SO excited about this answer!  After that, we proceeded to do an experiment to find out how much rain a cloud can hold.  

We used this wonderopolis wonder: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-much-rain-can-a-cloud-hold/

We completed the experiment: Rain Cloud in a cup.  The idea originated from the following website: 

http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2014/02/rain-clouds-in-jar-experiment.html

We started by completing one experiment as a whole class.  We added water and then shaving cream on top.  In the blue cup, we mixed water and blue food coloring.  After adding droplets, it took us 43 drops to make it rain in our cup.

Next, it was the student's turn to complete the experiment on their own!  It was amazing as I walked around listening to my students count over 100 as they added drops of "rain."  I told them that they were adding so much rain that they were creating a monsoon! :)

This was definitely one of my favorite experiments we have done so far this year!  The students were having so much fun, very engaged, and learned a lot!  We ended our lesson as the students recorded their observations and the amount of rain drops it took to make their cloud rain in their wonder journals.