Gray Days

It's been overcast and rainy now for about 2 weeks.  Maybe a sunny moment here or there, but mostly gray.  I don't know about you, but I don't do gray days very well.  So what to do?  Well, I try to make it colorful inside.  I try to add as much "color" as I can to my lessons.  One of my favorite books to read this time of year is Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh.  I love this book.  I have so much fun with the kids.  When I read the book I mix the colors in front of the kids using colored water.  So when the "red mouse steps into a yellow puddle", my colors mix in front of their eyes.  Three and four-year-olds are in love with magic and this is magical for them.  Their little faces light up enough to brighten any gray day.

After I'm finished with our large group, we go to small group.  I use "jelly marbles" and I let the students mix their own colors.  I use small, plastic condiment containers.  We place a clear jelly marble into the cup.  At this point, the marble is just a very small, very hard piece of  clear "plastic." I make sure they feel the marble before we add the liquid.  Once they tell me what color they want, we mix the color in the little cup using red, yellow and blue water.  I get my marbles, water containers and coloring tabs from the Steve Spangler Science website.  I love the quality of his products and I have not been disappointed yet.

When I come back to class after a day, we look at what we have in our little cups.  It does not resemble anything like the beginning marble.  Instead of hard, clear, and small, it is soft, colorful, and much bigger.  The "jelly marble" is actually a polymer.  It absorbed 300 times its weight in water.  The children are amazed.  We look at a beginning marble and then at the end result.  It's hard to believe they were the same thing.  They are able to take them home when we are done.  Another surprise for them is that the once hard sphere is now able to be broken.  They take great joy in doing that with their "marbles."  It is one of those very joyful, learning experiences that can make a gray day feel warm and sunny.

Wishing you colorful "gray days".

Websites
www.stevespanglerscience.com
www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ellen-Stoll-Walsh/70624406