Marshmallow Clouds

Our second day about clouds was even cloudier than the first, and rainy to boot. We talked about the different shapes of clouds and what each of them means (ie small fluffy clouds mean nice weather; lots of low dark clouds mean rain; and a big giant wall cloud means thunder storms).

Due to the rainy weather, we opted to spend the morning at Monkey Bizness, an indoor inflatables place for kids in Olathe, KS. We did stick to our theme in the afternoon, though, and painted some clouds... with marshmallows! Of course that also led to eating marshmallows as a snack, too. This was another craft that Molly (4) really loved and stuck with for a long time. I simply put white paint (and later pink paint, per her request) on a paper plate and had Molly dip a marshmallow in it and paint on construction paper. When she decided to paint a pink cloud, we discussed how clouds can look different colors (pinks, grays, whites, etc). She enjoyed the old saying: "Pink (red) sky at night, sailors' delight; Pink (red) sky at morning, sailors take warning."


A couple other cloud books we read together include: The Police Cloud by Christoph Niemann and Little Cloud by Eric Carle. The Police Cloud is such a cute book! Even though the story is not informational, there are several pages and pictures that can lead to discussions about clouds; such as rain comes from clouds; clouds are not solid; clouds can be fog, etc. The story itself is really sweet! Little Cloud is a quick, fun board book and is actually good for Molly (4) to "read" herself and follow along with the pictures.