We are Cloud Seeders

We started our science project for this week, and before we knew it,  it was already 1:30 – I wish all of our school days flew that fast!!

We’ve been studying clouds and rain, so decided to make a cloud mobile. However, Mom did not follow the directions well (recurring theme?) so our mobile really didn’t do well. We improvised by creating a wall hanging of sorts on a post in the dining area.

Cloud Mobile – wall hanging

• Use poster board to create vague cloud shapes
• Use cotton balls to mimic the structure of a cloud. You can do both sides of the  poster board as one side dries for a 3-d effect. Use puffy balls for cumulus cloud arrangements, small bits of cotton ball spread thin for cirrus clouds. Nimbus is a smaller cumulus arrangement. Stratus clouds are pulled thin, but not wispy. use as many of the formations as you are studying – we stuck to the main 4, and added the cumulonimbus as that is their favorite kind of cloud.
• Punch a hole in the poster board and string onto a dowel, using fishing line or thin string. Make sure to hang each formation in its appropriate place in the sky -cirrus clouds will not hang down as far as stratus since they are high elevation formations.
• An alternative arrangement would be to do the poster board on only one side, and then place on a wall or display board.
• we decorated our nimbus/cumulonimbus clouds with punch dots glued to fishing line, construction paper lightning, and cotton ball wisps made into tornadoes. We also used a marker to color the bottom of those formations to mimic what they look like for rain, to help make them look more realistic.

Enchanted Learning has a great unit for additional cloud information for the lower elementary set.

(originally published 1/27/2010)