Candy, anyone?

We have had an extended 'Weather theme' in our house the last few weeks. I thought we would be finished by now, and already moved on, but we are just now moving through the different types of weather-related emergencies - tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. 

One thing I wanted to share, just for fun, was a little game we played outside   about a week ago. It was such a nice day, and I just couldn't see not going out to enjoy the weather. So we got a quilt and headed out right after breakfast.    

I tried to take a few pictures, hoping for one good one.
You can see the results of THAT project at my
Spring pictures post. 

I was going to read them a couple books about the wind and talk some about that, but jets and helicopters flying overhead, and a construction crew across the street, kept that from happening. So after a slight diversion of watching the skies, and some running around from the kids, we settled back in. I decided just to show them a little something about evaporation. They had already learned the term evaporation, what it meant, and how the water cycle works. I wanted to show them that when water is evaporated, it doesn't fall back to the earth in the same place.  

I took our small glass beads (dollar store find) and made a miniature 'ocean' out of them. I explained how most of the water that is evaporated comes from the major bodies of water - oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, etc. Then I did something that the kids are never allowed to do. I threw our materials! :) I know - sounds crazy - it was a controlled toss. Actually, what I did was lift some of the beads in the air (evaporation), then showed that when they fall again, in the form of rain, they could fall anywhere (hence the small toss in the air, which caused the beads to scatter a bit on the blanket). The kids thought this was rather funny, and helped me put the 'ocean' back together again. 

Then I decided to make it a little bit more fun (I had already thought about doing this, but wanted to gauge just how interested they were before I pulled out all the stops and went forward with my idea).

Insert CANDY!

Amid the squeals of excitement, I told them we were going to do the same experiment again, except this time, my hands would be the ocean, and the water would evaporate - but THEY were going to be the different places that the rain would fall. So I did a controlled toss again, and they raced to grab the 'water' for themselves.  

I know this was a bit of a stretch as far as a lesson goes. The truth is, though - it got the point across very well, and in a very fun way. Before we came outside, everyone seemed to be in 'one of those moods' that wasn't very conducive to a good work period in the school area, and this was my way of getting them out of that mood, and also teaching them something both fun and important to know. No one had actually approached me with that question, so I am not sure if it was a NEEDED explanation or not - but I knew it wouldn't hurt to make sure and cover this, just in case. 

And it was fun getting out there with the kids for a little while - although we may have looked just a little strange to people driving by, but what's new? :)

Hope our little game brought you a smile this Spring/almost Summer day! Go out and enjoy the time with your children, even if it's a little silly!