Why do we see fog more often during spring and fall months and over or near bodies of water?
Can you identify the different types of fog?
Fog is condensation, not water vapor. Water vapor cannot be seen. When you walk through fog, you are moving through a cloud. One of my favorite investigations is to make a cloud in a bubble. Click here for more information.
This informational book is filled with captivating photographs of fog.
Use Carl Sandburg’s short poem, Fog, to explain metaphors, a literary device.
A weather poem by Aileen Fisher to teach descriptive words and rhythm.
I Like it When It’s Mizzly
I like it when it’s mizzly
and just a little drizzly
so everything looks far away
and make-believe and frizzly.
I like it when it’s foggy
and sounding very froggy.
I even like it when it rains
on streets and weepy windowpanes
and catkins in the poplar tree
and me.
If you are visiting a pond or studying pond life, be sure to include lily pads as part of your investigation. This aquatic plant thrives in full-sun and grows in still shallow water or at the edge of a deeper body of fresh water. I snapped these photos at Western Lake in Watercolor, Florida.
The rounded notched lily pad leaf has a waxy coating and repels water. Stomas, openings in the leaves, help the leaves float and exchange gases. Lily pads appear to be freely floating, but they are attached to a stem that extends down to where it is rooted at the bottom of a lake or pond. These perennials reproduce by producing root-like stems called rhizomes.
Many water lilies open from early morning to mid-afternoon, but others bloom at night. Blooms last three to five days.
Sometimes thought to be invasive, the leaves provide food and shelter for aquatic life and shade which lowers water temperature and reduces algae growth.
Seeing these animals, reminded me of The Little White Duck, a traditional children’s song.
Claude Monet, a French impressionist, is known for numerous large paintings of his lily ponds.
Another story to connect art, reading, and science:
The giant water lily can be found at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens.
I was surprised to discover water lilies in Montana!
Add plastic lily pads and pond animals (such as these) to your child’s pool, bathtub or in a water table for hours of fun!
With spring here and Easter approaching, use this time to study oviparous animals and perform egg investigations. My science students hatched chicken and duck eggs in the science lab. Click here to watch a video of our chicks hatching and here for a video of the ducklings.
I watched robins hatch on a window ledge at home.
But birds aren’t the only ones who lay eggs; both my aquatic and terrestrial snails surprised us with eggs!
We also watched praying mantids hatch from their egg case.
Turtles lay eggs too!
Have you ever seen frog or
toad eggs?
Watch the following informative video to learn about the variety of oviparous animals. Click here to watch the video full screen.
Try the following lively investigations and experiments that can be performed at home or in a classroom:
Identify which egg is hardboiled and which is raw by spinning them and squeeze an egg without breaking it!
Make an eggshell disappear! (A favorite!) Click here for directions.
Knock eggs in water using inertia. (I practiced with golf balls.)
The egg in the bottle was always a crowd pleaser in my science lab! I used “milk” bottles that I purchased at Michaels.
Use eggs to teach the importance of brushing your teeth. Click here for additional information.
Demonstrate the power of air pressure and separate the white from the egg yolk. Squeeze the air out of an empty water bottle and place the opening of the bottle over the egg yolk, still squeezing. Slowly let go of the squeeze and watch how the yolk is sucked into the bottle. It works like a pipette.
Use After the Fall as a springboard for an engineering activity. Task your students with devising a way to help an egg balance on a block wall without falling off or for the popular egg drop challenge. Click here to view full screen.
My youngest scientists tried to make an egg balance using salt which required perseverance!
The Easter Egg Farm is a humorous story to integrate art into your study of eggs or to read before you dye eggs. Click here to view full screen.
In the beloved classic children’s story, Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte makes her egg case in the fall before she dies. She explains to her friend, Wilbur, that the spiderlings will emerge in the spring.
Are these egg cases or something else preserved outside in a corner of a second story window? Perhaps the spider wrapped insects caught in its web. I will be watching! If you see old webs when you are outside, look to see if they contain an egg case.
Click here to view full screen. Grateful animals are no longer in cages! Discuss why with your children.
Teach children to care for the unlovable and they will grow to be compassionate.
Discovering a rainbow is always a special moment! Have you noticed that the sky is darker above the rainbow? Do you know why? Click here for the answer from Physics Girl. You won’t look at a rainbow in quite the same way again!
The visible spectrum appeared on my wall. I believe the light was refracted by the stop sign outside.
Place a prism on your window and observe the visible spectrum move around the room. Why does its location change? For another example, Click here. My students also brought the prisms outside to refract sunlight onto sidewalks.
Complete a rainbow arch to demonstrate capillary action. Click here.
Tilt a mirror inside a container filled with water, shine a flashlight toward the mirror, and look for a rainbow on the wall.
Use rainbow peeps or refraction glasses to find rainbows. Look at a variety of types of light. How does what you see through the lenses change? Click here for more information. Click here to order rainbow peeps. Remind children to not look directly at the sun.
Refract light with a CD. Click here.
Spray your hose with the sun behind you and low in the sky to refract the sunlight and reveal the visible spectrum.
Put the colors of the spectrum in order using density. Click here to watch Steve Spangler in action. Salt could be used in place of sugar.
Click here to use rainbows to develop the skill of questioning.
Watch the following video for additional ways to create rainbows and to observe the visible spectrum. Click here to watch the video full screen.
If you are studying rainbows, enjoy a rainbow snack of yellow (bananas), purple (grapes), orange (oranges), green (kiwi), red (strawberries), and blue (blueberries) sliced fruit.
For full screen viewing, click here.
I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. (Genesis 9:13)
Hawks are diurnal while owls are nocturnal, but both share a similar niche in the woodland ecosystem. I often see hawks soaring above me, but occasionally I catch them perched on a branch. These birds of prey are common throughout the United States. Click here to read more from the Audubon Society.
Click here to view full screen.
Click here to view full screen.
Check out this fun informational book about hawks. Click here for a peek inside. Use it to teach text features such as captions, labels, text boxes, and diagrams.
With these attributes, it isn’t surprising the Atlanta’s professional basketball team chose the hawk as its mascot.
Did you know that water magnifies? Why? Such an easy investigation to do with children!
The surface tension of water causes the molecules to create a rounded surface on the water drop. Then the water droplets refract the light and act like a magnifying glass.
Click here to view full screen.
In a prior lab, the student is holding an orb that is filled with water.
Use a water-filled test tube or other cylinder-shaped tube to magnify. What is the amount of magnification? Click here for an investigation.
On a rainy day, observe how raindrops magnify objects in nature. If you don’t want to wait until it rains, just place droplets of water on the object you wish to magnify.
I’m excited to share that I have been invited to be an ambassador for Run Wild My Child. Click here to visit their amazing site! It is filled with engaging and creative ideas about spending more time outdoors with your families. My readers know that is also a passion of mine! I’m looking forward to learning from these kindred spirits! Follow them on Facebook and Instagram too!
Don’t miss the treasure hunt on April 22 with real prizes! Click here for additional information.
The disciplines of art and science are easily connected and artists who are inspired by the natural world, observe and study its beauty, patterns, and shapes, as well as light and color.
We often notice the diversity of tree leaves, bark, nuts, seeds, and flowers, but have you considered the variety of tree shapes? Observing winter trees is an ideal time to compare the shapes. Sketch the shapes you see or as in the following video, paint some of the basic shapes.
Where was this photo taken? Scroll below the photo for the answer.
It appears at first glance to be the sunset over the ocean, but it’s actually the sunset over the clouds taken out the window of our airplane. Couds and the ocean consist of water, and both can be described as billowing. Add this to your collection of phenomena. After we flew through the clouds, the sky below was dark.
