This past week M and I practiced the letter/sound correlation of the letter C. M has a tendency to pronounce the /c/ sound as /t/, so we focused on enunciating words that had /c/ as its initial, middle, or end sound. One of the many words we practiced was the word ‘cloud’, so I thought it would be fun to do some activities around clouds using two great books: Little Cloud, by Eric Carle, and It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G. Shaw.
Little Cloud- Puffy Paint Clouds
We started by reading the book, Little Cloud, by Eric Carle.
When we had read through the book a couple of times, I mixed some white tempera paint with some shaving cream to create puffy paint for M’s clouds. Then I gave M some cotton balls to paint with.
Before he started painting I let M play with the cotton balls for few minutes so he could see how soft they are and how easily their shape can be manipulated by stretching, smooshing, and tearing them apart. I kept comparing the appearance of the cotton balls to that of a big, fluffy cloud, in order for him to make a visual connection between the two.
He had a lot of fun painting with the puffy paint, and creating his own fluffy clouds!
This is how his cloud painting turned out:
Tactile Letter C
When he was finished his painting, M glued some of the cotton balls onto the letter C to resemble clouds. I’m going to add this new letter to the tactile alphabet wall in his room.
It Looked Like Spilt Milk- Paint Blot Clouds
The book It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G. Shaw, is similar to Carle’s Little Cloud in that both books focus on a cloud’s ability to change its shape and take on many different forms.
I thought it would be fun for M to create his own book, as an extension to Shaw’s It Looked Like Spilt Milk. I brought out more blue cardstock paper and had M randomly squirt some white tempera paint onto one side of it.
Next, I helped him fold the paper in half, and then had M press the paper down with his hands in order to smoosh the paint into a cool design.
Each time M was SO excited to reveal the surprise image he had created!
‘OOOOooooooohhhhhh!’
After opening each one, he would study the image for a while and then tell me what he thought it looked like. I was really happy with how well this activity turned out! M was able to see something in EVERY SINGLE paint blot! Not surprising, the majority of them ended up resembling an animal of some kind 🙂
Here are the paint blot clouds M made:
Once they dried, I added the words to correspond with the book. Here’s an example taken from Shaw’s book:
And here are the new pages M created:
If I were to use this as a lesson in the classroom I would have each student create a paint-blot cloud and write out the sentences to go with it (or fill-in-the-blank, depending on their level), then I would display them on the bulletin board for a couple of weeks before binding all of the paintings together into a class book. added the end sentence “It was just a cloud” and then stapled M’s book together for him to read over and over again. He LOVES it! It’s times like this I wish I had a laminator… I also wish I had typed out the sentences and glued them on, rather than using my sloppy printing (I’m amazed as to how much my printing has degraded since being on parental leave. Aside from list making and writing cheques, EVERYTHING else is typed on my laptop or iPhone, which really makes me pause and wonder what M’s generation will be like…)
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