Weather Weekend!!!

Weather weekend came and went, in a whirlwind of fun, learning and experiments!

Weather was the theme I was most excited for in our theme days because Robert and I both seriously considered majoring in meteorology/geography, so I dedicated a whole weekend to weather because one day just wasn't enough.

We started with some condensation, precipitation, evaporation activities. We added shaving cream to cups of water to make cumulonimbus clouds and then we added blue food coloring and wached it rain when our clouds filled up with condensation.

The only hiccup in our experiment was that we had to keep feeding Winston spoonfuls of whipcream to keep him from eating our shaving cream clouds. As soon as I walked to the kitchen to put the whipcream away though, Winnie tried to gobble up a mouthful of shaving cream, which he promptly spit out, with lots of dramatic spitting and "blagh" noises.

Then we changed into our swim suits for our next experiments. We glued cotton ball clouds to a piece of blue sky and held them over a pan of boiling water, so that the evaporation could rise into the clouds. Then we were supposed to be able to squeeze out the condensation to make precipitaion. (I like all of these fancy water terms.) It would have been a failed experiment, but I took initiative and drenched the cotton balls in water when the kids weren't looking because I could tell that the evaporation just wasn't gonna cut it.

They were amused, but not impressed. My next activity though was a home run!

I told the kids about ancient African and Native American rain dances, and we made up our own rain chant. They danced around the yard, completely convinced that it was going to rain. I had set the hose with the sprinkly attachment on top of the swing set earlier. Then I sneakily turned it on in the middle of their chant, and it started to "rain."

Stanton was completely shocked and excited and amazed, until Noelle said, "It's not rain. It's just the hose on top of the swing set."

What's next Noelle, exposing Santa?

It turned out to be okay though.

They still had tons and tons of fun playing in the fake hose rain!

Then we talked about wind and tornadoes. My really simple "Will the wind blow it?" activity turned out to be one of their other favorites. They just walked around finding different objects, putting them in yes/no piles, according to whether or not the regular wind can blow it away. They loved it, and for the rest of the

day they kept naming things that the wind could or couldn't blow: house, giraffe, toilet, hermit crabs, teeth, sandwiches, lightbulbs, etc.

Then we foound tornado alley on a map and made our own tornado in a jar, which Robert and his Dad both thought looked a lot like a mason jar full of horse urine.

Then we had cloudy sky parfaits that were really just blue jello and whip cream. Winston refused to eat them because he thought the whipcream was shaving cream. Everytime I tried to give him a bite he fake creid and made the "Blagh" sound.

Then we took our cloud chart and went outside to identify cloud types. Turns out weather weekend happened to fall on a completely cloudless afternoon.

We ended the night at Baskin Robins. It was their first time there, and they loved it!

Winston loved it the most!

The next day we made a rain stick. We hammered tiny nails into a wrapping paper roll and filled it with rice and beans (brown rice cause we're healthy.) Then we decorated and shook it back and forth all night long. It sounded exactly like a real rain stick!

Then we found a centipede in the bathroom. Grandma put it under a glass, and we tried counting its legs. (Noelle has been counting to 100 multiple times a day ever since. Robert calls her Rain Man.) Then Grandpa killed it because centipedes are poisonous, which we learned on bug day, and we flushed it down the toilet and got back to our weather stuff.

Monday morning was the grand finale for Weather Weekend. We visited Daddy at work, and played with all of the weather equipment. It was a BLAST! Katie showed the kids around the weather center, and Paul and Nicole even gave them prizes to take home. Stanton and Noelle are totally impressed with Daddy's work and all of his super nice Channel 5 friends!

Noelle loved seeing herself on the t.v. screen and playing with the weather clicker. She also told me that she  liked that she didn't have to whisper at Daddy's work, and that she could dance if she felt like it, and that none of the people cared when she tripped over all of the cords and almost knocked down the camera.

I tried to get Noelle to say,"This just in, the future cast calls for rapid winds sweeping aacross the valley." But she wouldn't do it.

 Stan Man was doing a very good job reporting on the wild fires until...

Breaking news! Sister takes weather clicker from baby brother, who angrily chases her around the station trying to get it back. Laid back mother just takes pictures and laughs, rather than putting an end to the chaos. Witnesses say that the childrens' father was amused and perhaps, slightly embarassed. However, he was overheard multiple times saying how very, very happy he was that his family visited him at work, which made laid back mother feel very, very special!

And we couldn't leave without doing our own special news report at the desk!  We love Daddy's work! It's SO exciting!

Thank you for joining us for this special weather weekend update. Stay tuned for next time, when we talk about  surprise parties, cousins in town and Memorial Day weekend! I'm Kimmie Curry. See ya later alligator! (That would be my sign-off if I was really a news anchor. It may sound cheesy, but it felt so cool to say outloud as I was typing it.)