Little Cloud by Anne Booth and Sarah Massini and published by Egmont is a fab little book about a little cloud who starts off small and then grows big and turns into a rain cloud. Everyone likes looking at the cloud when it is little and the cloud worries no one will like it when it is a big rain cloud. The story is brilliant because it teaches you about clouds and how even when you change you are still liked.
Activities
Rainy day walk
Cloud discussion
What does that cloud look like activity
Cloud Viewing with a home made cloud viewer
Scrambled egg clouds
Sky meringue
White fruit and vegetable clouds
Draw the sky from your window
Cloud discussion
Sky pictures
Playing with water and clouds
Outdoors
I thought that I would start with the outdoor activities first as the book is set outside. The first activity could be to go for a walk in wellies on a rainy day. Your child/children could have fun splashing in the puddles and you could look at the sky and talk about the clouds and what they can see. If you do multiple walks in the rain then you could talk about how the clouds change as sometimes you can see individual clouds and sometimes the whole sky just looks like one massive cloud. Another activity could be to do some cloud spotting like in the book. You could do this at home lying on a blanket looking at the sky or you could do this out and about from a bridge for example. You can let imaginations run wild about what the different clouds look like. A final outdoor activity could be to make a cloud viewer using a ring of cardboard with a hole in the middle. Round the outside you could draw or print pictures of the different clouds off with their names and then make a handle using card again or a lolly pop stick. Your child/children can then identify the different clouds whilst out and about and it introduces new words to them and they will then learn the names of the different clouds and how they look.
Food/Cooking
Some foods look like clouds so a nice easy one you could start with is scrambled eggs. You could arrange them on the plate to look like clouds and you could also do a fried egg to go with it that could be the sun and then you could do cloud shaped toast. You could get creative and do some vegetables in the shape of trees and then that is your child's/children's tea sorted. Another cloud inspired food could be to make (or buy) meringues and serve it with blue jelly and this will look like the sky and clouds. If you can't get hold of blue jelly you could always use red or orange and then pretend it is a sunset. A final cloud inspired food could be to give your child/children some white fruit and vegetables like coconut, banana, pear, cauliflower and then they can make their own sky on their plate. You could also give them some blueberries or raisins and they could use this as the rain.
Indoors
The first indoor activity could be to look out the window and then then your child/children could draw what they can see with a focus on the sky. You could always do this activity with them at different times in the day so they can see how it changes and then discuss this. To make it easier for them and save them keeping looking up and down you could stick the piece of paper they are using on to the window using a bit of sticky tape or blue tack. Another activity could be to do some sky pictures with clouds. If you give your child/children some paper, paint, paint brushes and cotton wool they they can paint the paper as the sky any colour they want and then use the cotton wool to make clouds. If they wanted to make storm clouds then they could dip it in black or grey paint before sticking it on the page. They could maybe do different pictures like a stormy day, sunny day, cloudy day and when the sun is setting or rising. You could talk to your child children how the sky and clouds change in their pictures. A final indoor activity could be for them to have a bowl of water and some cotton wool and just let them play with it and see how the cotton wool changes. If you wanted to make it a bit more exciting you could add some food colouring to the water so it is a different colour for them to play in.
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