#5: Water, Water, Everywhere!
Hello everyone,
We hope you all had a fantastic week and enjoyed Sunday’s beautiful weather. This week might get a little rainy, which makes this a great week for water exploration. We highly recommend going outside in the rain, just remember to leave clean towels at the front door. In this week’s STEAM at home, we have a boat-making challenge, mud pies, rain-sticks and more.
Boat-Making
You can fold a boat out of newspaper, use a strip of tinfoil, or use household material and try to design your own model. You can do it inside in the sink, in a puddle in your neighborhood, a stream down a trail, or at a local pond. Will your boat float? Can you make passengers or decorate it? How much can it carry without sinking? Which things make your boat sink and why?
More resources for this activity:
https://childsci.org/float-a-boat/
https://tinkergarten.com/activities/what-floats-your-boat
Mud pies
Mud pies are a fun way to get messy. You can decorate it with natural things or things you make. This is a great way to teach your kids about leave no trace. Tell them at the start of the activity that everything will need to be returned how they found it - you can always take a picture of their masterpieces. If you’re staying inside during the rain, you can also make edible mud pies with pudding, crumbled up cookies and gummy worms.
Rain Music
Bring pots, pans, containers, whatever you want outside and see how they sound in the rain with raindrops pounding on them. Which sounds do you like better? Can you describe the sounds that different objects make? Muffled? Rich? Piercing? Pleasing? Which ones make the loudest sound? The quietest? Can you make a song?
Rain Sticks
What’s a better way to celebrate the rain than with a rain stick? You can use toilet paper rolls, containers, whatever you have, but we recommend clear jars or bottles so you can watch everything shake. You can fill it with whatever you have, see what sounds they make if you can make it sound like rain. If you go on a walk outside, you could also collect natural things you find and put them inside.
Nature Spotlight
We had a lot of outdoor activities for you all this week. We wanted to highlight some easy, but longer projects that can nurture your child’s patience and observation skills while giving them something to look forward to.
A great way to start off the week is by making a rain gauge. You can use a plastic bottle or a clear container, write the measurements on the side, bury it a bit in the ground to keep it stable and check out the results after it rains. How can you record the data? Why is it important to know how much it rains? If it rained one day, is that climate or weather?
If your child is going outside every day, consider starting a nature journal. During or after a trip, they can draw or write about their outdoor experiences, what made them curious, how they felt, and whatever they want. This gives them something creative to do outside, keep up their writing skills, and practice mindfulness. You can try a solo sit, where you pick a spot outdoors a few feet away from other people and quietly create for at least 10 minutes.
And if you go on a rainy-day nature walk, we recommend hunting for frogs and worms, jumping in puddles, tasting the raindrops, making mud angels, and looking for rainbows.
What We’re Reading
This week, we’re reading Meghan Fitzgeralds’ Need a Second to Breathe? Here Are Some Hacks to Foster Your Kids’ Independent Play. Her article has great tips for exploring with your kids, introducing creative challenges, and setting up longer projects. If you’re looking to keep your kids occupied for longer periods of time, her article is a good place to start.
That’s all we have for this week. If you tried any of this week’s activities, let us know how they went!