Making Predications and adjectivies

Cloud Day!

I think this was my favorite day of our spring unit (Yes, I am WAY behind on the blogging. Sorry.). For this expressive language lesson, I focused on getting the kiddos to describe an object. 

Expressive Language: adjectives, conversational language

Receptive language: understanding simple "wh" questions

To kick off the morning, the kiddos laced and stuffed white clouds. It was a great fine motor activity and held their attention during morning work time. 

Here is the link to the cloud picture I used. I enlarged and copied the cloud on to sturdy paper for the lacing activity.

Next, I read the story "Little Cloud" by Eric Carle. We used the clouds we made in morning work to act out and follow along with the story. 

 

Next, we had some fun! We made a cloud in the microwave!! I gathered everyone on the floor next to the microwave and held up a bar of Ivory soap (it MUST be ivory soap). I asked some prompting questions like: What is this? How does it feel? What does it look like? What color is it? Does it smell? I then wrote the answers to these questions on chart paper under the word SOAP. Then we made some predictions. 

T: What do you think will happen to the soap when I put it in the microwave?

 I really had to prompt this part of the lesson, but once we got going the kiddos started getting the idea. I asked each kiddo a different question: Will it change color? If yes, what color will it be? I wrote their answers on the chart paper at the bottom. 

Now, that all the pre-work is out of the way, on to the fun! Cut the bar of ivory soap in half (I did do a full bar and its not much bigger than a half bar, but it seemed to make less of a mess in the microwave when I cut it in half!). Put the soap on a microwave safe plate and turn the microwave on for 2 minutes. Watch it grow!!! Take it out and set it where everyone can see. Again, we talked about how it looked, smelled, felt. I recorded all of these answers on the chart paper under the word CLOUD. 

 

 

I was so pleased with the spontaneous language that was happening during this lesson. It was so much more than I thought possible!

CENTERS

Water colors on the soap cloud-The kiddos used eye droppers to add color to the soap cloud. I put out two medium sized Tupperware containers with part of the soap cloud in each. Then I let the kiddos drop colored water on the clouds! With each kiddo, I added some new soap to the dish. The clouds turned out so pretty!! 

 

Cotton Ball clouds-the kiddos glued cotton balls on cloud shapes. I used the same cloud pattern as before. I just copied it on blue paper.

Poke a cloud with a golf tee.