Art & Science Collide: Cloud Jars

Each week in the summer, we create at least one art project and we do one science experiment/project. I came up with Science Fridays last year and the girls loved it so much that I decided to do it again this year. Thanks to Pinterest I've found a bunch of new things for us to try.. Ironically, someone else does science on Fridays and calls is Sci-Fri (instead of Sci-Fi...isn't that great?!).

I came across this post about cloud jars on the Teach Preschool blog and even though it is easy and preschool level, I thought my girls would get a kick out of it too. I really think this can be fun for just about any age. Really, shaving cream? Of course it is going to be fun!

First we talked about a few of the different kinds of clouds including cumulonimbus clouds, which made us think of the scene from the movie Up! where Russell talks about the clouds. I tried to find it on You Tube to post on here, but couldn't come across it easily. ;-) After talking about the different kinds of clouds, we talked about how they were formed and how it rains.

Then we filled our jars with water, topped with shaving cream to make a cloud and proceeded to add "moisture" or liquid watercolors to the clouds. When the clouds were filled with too much moisture, it began to "rain" watercolors into the water. They thought this was so fun! They each did two jars worth before we moved on to making messy shaving cream art.

 

A quick note on the plastic droppers I got from Discount School Supply company (along with the liquid watercolors). They float when you leave them in the paint bottles! It was great! The girls could just leave them sit in the top of the bottles so we didn't have to worry about getting the colors mixed.

They really loved this! I think they could have made jar after jar and still be entertained. You could also turn this into a color theory lesson about mixing colors to make new colors. It was a great project to do on a rainy, yucky summer morning.