Do you remember staring up at the clouds to look for cloud pictures or shapes? I used to take my students out to look at clouds. Then we would go back into the classroom and write stories about what we had seen. We recently painted a cardboard tube blue with white fluffy clouds to create a sky viewing tool and did several activities with it.
Do you need to have sky tool to view cloud? No, but it helped us narrow our focus onto a small section of the sky at a time.
How to Make a Cloud Pictures in the Sky Tool
It is so easy to make your Do You See Pictures in the Sky tool. You simply take a cardboard tube and paint sky blue. White fluffy clouds are then painted onto the tube to illustrate what the tool is used for. Your children could select any color of blue to make theirs and any gray or white for the clouds. They could use cotton balls as we did to make the clouds. Sponges or foam brushes would be great to paint clouds with too.
What to do While Looking at Cloud Pictures
- You can have your children point the cloud viewer towards the clouds in the sky and share what cloud pictures they see. They can be encouraged to use descriptive words to share their size, shape, color, and texture. Kids can use action words to share what the cloud picture is doing. If your children love learning big words, you can tell them that they are using adjectives to describe their pictures and verbs to tell about their actions.
- Children can work together to find cloud pictures and build a story about what is happening with their cloud objects in the sky. Not all the stories need to take place in the sky. You can encourage your kids to use the cloud pictures as inspiration and let their stories take place anywhere.
- Cloud picture viewing can be done lying on the ground and looking straight up, sitting in a chair, or standing. We have viewed clouds in each of these ways.
- You can have your children take crayons and drawing paper to record their favorite cloud pictures. We have found adding facial characteristics or additional details to the cloud picture, later on, is a lot of fun.
- Writing down a story based your cloud pictures is fun too. Children can create a cloud story journal that they can bring along with their cloud viewer to parks, on car trips, or use in their backyard.
Wonderful Cloud-Themed Books
Here are some wonderful books about clouds and clouds pictures I think you will enjoy. They would be fun to read just before having your first cloud picture viewing session.
Shapes in the Sky: A Book About Clouds (Amazing Science: Weather)
Little Cloud board book
Clouds (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1)
It Looked Like Spilt Milk
I am participating in a fun series this week with awesomely talented bloggers called Craft Closet Boredom Busters. Each day I will be sharing a fun activity you can do with your children along with links to the other bloggers’ ideas!
Here are some other Craft Closet Boredom Buster for Kids ideas:
Car Race Counting Game from Frugal Fun for Boys
Craft Rope Ornament from The Educator Spin on It
Pet Store Scavenger Hunt from Toddler Approved
If you or your kids make a cloud picture viewing tool of your own, please share a picture of it with me on Facebook.
