We decided to take a detour with our Rain/Weather Study and talk about

R a i n b o w s!

What is a rainbow?

Rainbows are spectacular rays of color. Sunlight looks white, but it's really made up of different colors...red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet or ROY G BIV ( we remembered this from our study on the Sun ) The sun makes rainbows when white sunlight passes through rain drops. The raindrops act like tiny prisms. They bend the different colors in white light, so the light spreads out into a band of colors that can be reflected back to you as a rainbow.

What conditions are needed to see one?

1. Rain
2. Sunlight
3. you must be standing between the rain and the sun

Are there full cicle rainbows?

YES! If we were high enough in the air we would see them, but b/c we are low on the horizon we only see half or part of it. Pilots often see them.

Double Rainbows?

Yes, they do happen! The inner and brighter rainbow has the red on the top and the blue on the bottom side. The outer and dimmer rainbow has the color scheme reversed.

Can a rainbow appear during the night?

Yes! The nighttime rainbow is very rare and occurs only when the moon is bright enough and positioned the right way in respect to the rain.

We also did a couple activites to help us understand.

INDOOR RAINBOW: We took a glass jar, put a mirror inside and tilted it. We then took a flashlight and pointed it at the mirror. It displayed light on the wall with a rainbow on either side.

We also proved that light is made up of not white but ROY G BIV.

We took a CD and pointed the flashlight at it, making a beautiful display of rainbows on the CD.

A couple journal entries in their weather journals.

We started with the first rain; Genesis chapters 6 through 8. Raining for 40 days and 40 nights. Meterologists refer to this kind of flood as a 'traditional flood' ~ one brought on by a lots of rain.

Then we moved on to the Water Cycle

~ water evaporates from oceans, lakes, rivers and even puddles, any water source
~ when the evaporated water reaches high into the atmosphere it condenses( remember cold air can't hold its water ) and forms clouds
~ when the teeny water droplets within the clouds get big and heavy, they fall as rain

Here is one of the kids' drawings on the Water Cycle.

We talked about hail some months ago when we had a hail storm, here is that post.

This time we included HAILING ANIMALS. Yes, it's true, the following animals were frozen within hailstones.

~ 1882, frogs in Dubuque, Iowa, when the ice thawed the frogs hopped away
~ 1894, 6 in. turtles in Vicksburg, Missouri
~ 1821, herring fell in Scotland
~ 1870, snails in Chester, Pennsylvania
~ 1892, mussels in Paderborn, Germany
~ 1939 frogs in Trowbridge, England
~ 1941, a clam hit a boy on the shoulder in Yuma, Arizona
~ 1973, ducks in Startgutt, Arkansas

WHY? ~ b/c of WATERSPOUTS ( tornados over water ) that fling these animals into the upper atmosphere where they ice over and eventually fall. How's that for science, history and fun all rolled into one?!

To include a bit of fun, we made RAIN STICKS!

You need paper towel tubes, nails, rice or small dried beans, tape and index cards.

 You can paint or decorate it anyway you wish -- my children, however, chose to keep them plain.

We're going to continue with rain and do a small unit on rainbows next.

What does God's Word say about clouds?

Prov 8:28 ~ God established the clouds
Psalm 148:4 ~ Clouds were made to praise God
Job 38:16 ~ God balances the clouds in the air
Psalm 147:8 ~ God covers the heavens with clouds
Gen 9:14 ~ God brings a cloud over the Earth; a rainbow is seen within the cloud
Ex 13:21 ~ God led people with a cloud ~ the Glory Cloud
Ex 19:9 ~ God came to Moses in a cloud
Ex 24:12-18 ~ Moses went up to Mt Sinai, a cloud covered the mountain -God's presence
Acts 1:9 ~ When Jesus assended into Heaven, a cloud rec'd Him

Kinds of Clouds in the Word

white ~ Rev 14:4
bright ~ Job 37:11, Zec 10:1
thick ~ job 22:14, 37:11
black ~ 1 Kin 18:45
swift ~ Is 19:1
small ~ 1 Kin 18:44
great ~ Ezek 1:4

We made a cloud in a bottle ~ you need a soda bottle, a match, and a little bit of warm water 

We used Amanda's ( from Hearts & Trees ) Clouds Art Show. We looked at the clouds in each piece of art and shared the differences in how each artist painted them. Using Amanda's worksheet, we went through each of the paintings and wrote words to descibe the clouds. I think we're going to use her Art Show for another Art Appreciation day as well to study the entire art pieces, not just the clouds.

Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest, passed on a wonderful cloud e-book as well. Lots of great info!

Take A Cloud Walk

Then we painted our own clouds! Here are 2 of my kids' artwork

River ~ age 3

 Taylor ~ age 11

Spent time cloud watching too

 We first discussed evaporation, humidity & condensation. 

Then we put ice & water in a glass and waited to see how long till we saw the process of condensation....10 mins. 

We talked about how condensation is the secret behind clouds.

We read The Man Who Named the Clouds and talked about how to identify them.

We printed and put together this to help us find clouds while we cloud watched. Thanks to Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest for this link.

Then we went outside to cloud watch!  We found several different clouds out this afternoon -- they are pictured in this post!

Part 2 of Clouds -- tomorrow!

We started with a few scriptures that mention the sun.

Gen 1:3 ~ God said, "Let there be light," and there was!

Joel 2:31, Acts 2:20 ~ when the Lord returns the sun will darken and the moon will turn blood red

Mal 1:11, Ps 113:3 ~ From the rising of the sun to its going down, the name of the Lord is to be praised!

Luke 4:40 ~ at sunset, Jesus healed many people

Luke 23:45 ~ the sun/sky grew dark and the veil was torn in two when Jesus was crucified, giving us access to the Holy of Holies! Hallelujah

Eph 4:26 ~ Don't let the sun go down on your anger.

Rev 21:23, 22:5 ~ in Heaven there will be no need for the sun b/c Jesus will illuminate everything

 The sun is made up of helium and hydrogen.

The surface of the sun is 10,000 degrees F, its core is 27,000,000 degrees.

The sun is exploding that's what makes the sunshine.

 The traveling energy ( we call it sunshine, sunlight ) zips around through space in the form of waves. The sunlight is actually all colors of the rainbow -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo & violet. 

There are long waves that are red & orange and short waves that are blue, indigo & violet. But b/c the shorter ones scatter better, we only see blue -- that's why the sky is blue.

 We see sunsets & sunrises as red or pink b/c the light enters the atmosphere at an angle, in a long slanted path, going through so much air that the short blue wavelengths disappear, leaving only the reds.

We made a simple sun viewer

Cut your cereal box so you have a flap that opens, near the bottom

Take a pushpin or a needle and make a hole in the center of the bottom

 oops, I don't have a picture of this part, but you take a strip of wax paper, a little longer than your box, and tape it inside the hole you made with the flap. I honestly am not sure what the point of this part is, but we did it anyhow. Once that's finished, tape the flap with duct tape -- seal it well so you don't have any light coming in.

 Then take it outside and have a looksy at the sun!

As part of our Weather Study my husband and the kids made a weather vane.

Use a saw and put slits on each end of a dowel

Taylor is measuring the dowel so we can get the exact middle to drill the nail, mark it

Using a foil pan, cut the arrowhead and the tail

Glue them into the slits you made

Take a metal washer, place it over the stick that's the base for the vane, lay the dowel over it and put a nail through the mark you made earlier

Viola, a weather vane! It's very windy where we live so we've been having fun watching it spin!

Today we continued with our weather unit; we talked about the wind.

We are contiuing to use this book.

Amos 4:13 says God creates the wind.

Here are 3 other scriptures we talked about relating to wind. Mark 4:35-39 ~ Jesus and his disciples on the boat in the storm; He commands the wind or the storm to stop  and it does.  John 3:8 ~ the wind is like the Holy Spirit;  the wind blows where it wants just as the Spirit does; we can't see the wind but we can see the effects of it, just as we can tell when the Spirit has been with us; we are changed. Rev 7:1 ~ God sends angels to stop the four winds, so the tribes could go on and do Gods work. And of course the name of my blog comes from Psalm 135:7

Wind: when air moves from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure

We have wind, or you can say the air moves, b/c of the different temperatures  Hot air is lighter than cold air; hot air rises, leaving a hole below it ( low pressure zone ) and then cold air rushes in filling the hole. It continues to move in that circular pattern.

For you chefs: the same circular pattern of wind is true when we boil a pot of water. The water on the bottom is heated and begins to rise, the cooler water fills in that area on the bottom and it too warms and rises.......it's a process called a 'convection cell.'

Weather Vanes, where'd they come from anyway?: vane comes from the Anglo Saxon word fane, meaning banner or flag.  In medieval Europe, long cloth banners were flown from castles to show archers the direction of the wind.  Those cloth banners were eventually replaced with metal vanes that had a rooster on top.

* my favorite part of what we learned * ~ We can give credit to Pope Nicholas for the rooster; he decreed that every church should display a rooster in memory of Jesus' prophecy that the rooster would not crow until Peter denied him three times.

Blessings from the wind: spreads seeds of plants, cleans the air, used to pump water or give electricity

Wind Words/Phrases: 'Windfall,' 'get wind of something,' someone 'takes the wind out of your sails,'  'long-winded,' you 'know which way the wind blows.'

Dad and kids will be making a weather vane this week, I'll post as soon as they do.

All are taken from the same books we've been using for this weather study.

1. Following up on one of the experiments from the beginning of our weather study…..

The steel wool rusts—and the water rises within the glass measuring cup. It was pretty neato!

It does this because the oxygen in the cup is used up by the rusting process, which creates an area of low pressure. Water then rushes into the cup, trying to fill the place of the used up oxygen. The water actually rises to about 1/5^th of the cup b/c oxygen makes up 1/5^th of what makes up ‘air.’

We’ve moved on to air pressure!

All those layers of atmosphere, pushing down on us, well that’s atmospheric pressure! Pretty cool, huh?! The kids asked why we can’t feel that on our heads. *snicker, snicker*

This was a great time to explain a little further why our ears pop as we drive further up the mountains here in Colorado. The higher you go, the less pressure there is. The air pressure pushing in on your eardrums from the outside drops until it’s less than the pressure pushing out from the inside. The imbalance gives us that funny feeling.

Air pressure is continually changing. We have low pressure ~ lighter warm air; & high pressure ~ heavier cold air. We used the experiment below to show that warm air takes up more space than cold.

We put a balloon over a soda bottle and put it into a pot of water. Here is  the balloon before going into the water.

But as the water is heated, the molecules begin to move faster and faster – just like what happens when air is warmed.

That makes the balloon stretch and blow up.  In the atmosphere, warm air takes up more space than the same amount of cold air—and weighs less.

We also made a barometer, the instrument used to measure air pressure. We've been tracking it over several days now. Very cool!

I had planned to discuss air pressure with the kids today for the next step in our weather unit, but as it turned out the weather, or should I say our Great Creator, had other ideas.

As we prepared for our study, mom grabbing her notes and book, kids grabbing their weather journals, colored pencils and clipboards -- a rather foreign sight emerged from the window.

The sky became dark and ominous; out of no where a downpour, or ‘cloudburst,’ as we learned today, overtook the skies.  I told the kids, ‘This is what mom enjoys, a peaceful thunderstorm’ – can you call a thunderstorm peaceful? I don’t know but I like them! It’s relaxing.

We rushed outside as the sound of hail beat against the glass windows --- the hail, though not very big, began to cover my beloved’s flower garden.

Then my son, Kaden, notices a bag of garbage floating down our street. Its trash day and they hadn’t been by to collect it; the street was so flooded it picked that bag up and carried it away. I know we should have probably run out to get it, but we had such a great time watching the swift water carry it away. Eventually it did come to a stop – at another trash can sitting in the road. It was so flooded cars were parking on the side of the road to wait out the storm – what a sight, a crazy mother and her brood giggling, pointing at trash and playing in the rain!!!

 All precipitation starts out as snow, as it travels through the layers of atmosphere, ( learned earlier this week ) the snow turns to rain b/c of the changes in the layers temperature. But that drop continues to move, twisting about inside the cloud with the air current; when it goes upward it hits freezing temps and turns to ice. It bounces around some more like a ball, continually freezing and thawing, building layers of ice. Eventually the ball becomes heavy enough to fall……..that is hail!

Here is Kaden’s drawing of how hail is formed.

So b/c of our Creator’s surprise rain/hail storm, one that lasted much longer than the usual couple minutes, we moved on to rain and hail today.

It was a delightful day!