A Little about Clouds

Koko's picture of clouds. The bottom horizontal are stratus and the puffy ones are cumulus, and the dark scribble, cumulonimbus.

One of my goals was to learn the different cloud names with my children. I would have liked to have made a cloud reference book from these free cloud 3-part cards from ETC but had to improvise a bit. Originally, I wanted to laminate the cards and poke a hole and put it on a ring, but since I was scarce on time and energy, I just stuck them in a cheap small mini-album that was lying around the house and supplemented with these nonmenclature clouds from Montessori Materials. I also used information from World encyclopedia to add helpful factoids to my "book" and downloaded this NASA chart to put on my fridge to help us visualize/categorize the clouds at different heights. And oh, I did arrange the clouds from lowest to highest in the book.

The cloud book that I keep on forgetting to bring to the car. Might as well leave it in the car forevermore since we seem to look at clouds a lot in the car..or should I make another one for the house as well?

Don't underestimate kids. They understand a lot more than what you give credit for. Both my children are pretty good at identifying clouds even words like cumulonimbus which I was worried it might be too difficult to say! Unfortunately, my brain is mush. So the point of this cloud book was for me to bring it on car rides where they inevitably ask, "Mom, what cloud is that?" and presto--instant enlightenment. Unfortunately, I can't seem to bring the cloud book to the car.

However, two books have redeemed me in my time of need.
Clouds by Marion Dane Bauer has very sparse text, but still informative covering three cloud types-cirrus, stratus, and cumulus. I learned several things. Like did you know that even a small cloud could be as heavy as ten large elephants? And if you can see a cloud's edges, that means the cloud is made of water, but if the edges fade into the sky, the cloud is made of ice?

Clouds (another book from the Let's-Read-And-Find-Out Science series) by Anne Rockwell has a lot more text and covers a wider spectrum of cloud types. I liked it generally, but I felt some of the illustrations were confusing and I wished the author didn't mention that cumulonimbus are the scariest clouds. Of course, it's true, but I didn't appreciate such direct language so I just changed the wording a bit... I did love the "Create the Cloud" experiment in the back of the book which is similar to the one in the A to Z kids Stuff website (scroll down to the science section) And some other cloud resources and activities can be found in First School, Weather Wiz Kids, Preschool Express, and fun4kids.

I actually didn't do any of the activities yet, but am hoping to at least create a cloud soon! However, my kids have been enamored by this completely fiction Korean book, Cloud Bread (click the title to see links to pictures!) reminiscent to Lauren Child's The Princess and the Pea. (I can't wait to get my hands on her Goldilocks!) See this media clip in Chinese! In Korea, they have a Korean and English version. It's a bloody shame that it's not in the American market.

Anyway, the story is about kitty children finding a cloud outside and bringing it home to their mother to bake into cloud bread that makes them float! They float to locate their late-to-work father and by giving him cloud bread (they were worried that he didn't have any breakfast) he floats to work on time. My kids clamored to make cloud bread so I made German pancakes which kinda looks like what I imagine cloud bread would look like. After all, it puffs up and looks fluffy.

Do you have a favorite cloud book/activity? And don't you love "Fog" by Carl Sandburg?