Cotton ball clouds

We recently spent a few days exploring different types of weather.  We also focused a great deal on raindrops and clouds.  This simple activity that I would like to share with you today sparked some great use of vocabulary and imagination…

To begin our discussion on clouds, we read the book “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” by Charles Shaw…

This is a classic picture book that perhaps many of you have used in your own classrooms before.  The narrator describes the different things he sometimes sees when he looks at the clouds, like rabbits and birds.  The children guessed long before the end of the book that each of the illustrations were clouds but the author waits until the last page to reveal that these were indeed all clouds…

The reason I love this book so much is that there are so many different directions you could go with this book.  Today I’m going to share a little game we played and then an art activity to go along with it…

Deborah began our circletime game by taking out the large felt board.  On it, she placed puffy shapes that she had cut out of white felt.  Deborah pointed to a shape and then asked the children what they thought the shape looked like.  They all shouted out their answers at the same time…

There were no rules or right or wrong answers in this game.  The children were simply free to use their imaginations.  After our short felt board game, Deborah passed cotton balls around the circle.  Each child took one and held on to it as Deborah showed them how to pull and stretch it to make a fluffy cotton ball cloud…

After the demonstration, the children took their cotton balls and went to the art table.  There they found black paper and glue.  We challenged the children to create a new picture or shape out of their cotton balls…

Once they had a nice puddle of glue on their paper, the children worked and stretched their cotton balls into a fluffy cloud.  Then they placed them on their paper and manipulated them into the shape that they desired…

When all of the children were finished, those that wished to share showed their clouds to the class…

Again, we all shouted out our guesses as to what we thought those clouds might be.  Some were monsters, blobs, caterpillars, and circles…

But more than anything, I think these fluffy little cotton ball clouds were a wonderful way for children to use their imaginations…

Available on Amazon

Links to Grow On

Clouds in Jars and On the Table Top Too!

Exploring Raindrops and Clouds in Preschool

Disappearing Clouds