Tot School - Ww

Tot School - W is for Weather, Whales and Watermelon

Owen and Eli: 43 months old

There are loads of fun weather related science experiments on Pinterest! We had a pretty mixed bag for weather in Texas this week too, so it worked out well to talk about rain, clouds, wind, sun, tornadoes and fog. We watched some YouTube videos on tornadoes, and then made our own tornado in a jar using water, dish soap, vinegar, food coloring and glitter (for the debris). Pretty cool!

We found objects around the house and yard that they hypothesized whether or not they would be able to blow away using straws and their own wind (ie - their breath). All three of them loved this game and they raced their objects across the floor. It only got gross when they tried really hard to blow a heavy object and ended up spitting through the straw!

We 'painted clouds' using shaving cream on the table and practiced writing our Ws in the foam.

We made 'rain in a jar' using water, shaving cream and food coloring. Next time I'll make them choose just one color at a time - several colors at once gets really dirty looking and murky.

We made frost in a tin can too using shaved ice, water and salt. We ended up having to put it in the freezer to get the frost effect. I think this experiment would work better when the house is a little colder. We used our magnifying glasses to check out the frost crystals up close.

We talked a lot about seasons and the weather that usually comes with each season. I let them each choose a picture of a tree in a certain season to draw a picture of what you might do outside then (ie - building a snowman in the winter). I love the differences in my twins! The first picture is what Eli did with his winter tree. He turned it over and drew a 'watermelon machine' that shoots out watermelons. Owen's is the middle picture, where he meticulously colored each branch and the dirt brown and the grass green, then drew a man walking in the leaves. The third picture is Garrett's, who loves practicing pulling every cap off the markers and drawing one line with each color. He's only 20 months - I can't expect much!

Our whale activities were mostly printables, like the alphabet tracing pages from MoneySavingMom.com, the color by number from education.com (notice the difference again in their coloring personalities!) and the preschool reading pages from education.com.

Here's what we found at the library whale and weather related books...

And of course, you can't learn about W without eating a watermelon snack! We made paper plates into watermelons and tried another color by letter page too, with the same result again from Eli. What am I going to do with this kid!? ; )

Only three letters to go! Next week we're learning about X is for X-Ray and Fox. Stay tuned! Click here to see what other Tot School kids learned this week.