Clouds and Lightning

Thursday (19/02/2009)
a) A glance of the weather
* The kids kept telling me, "It's raining". It wasn't very heavy and the sky was not dark. We hoped for a rainbow. However, there wasn't any.

b) Kids : Questions and Answers
* Ze Yan: Why are the clouds dark?
* When the clouds are thinner, the sunlight could shine through. However, as water evaporates, the clouds get thicker and the sunlight gets difficult to shine through....that's the reason.
* Ze yan: Not because of the factory smoke?
* Teacher: No.c) The Lightning.Justin, Jin Shan: Why is there lightning then?
* I drew picture of cars caught in traffic jam.
* Similar to the clouds, when there are more clouds; they tend to rub against one another especially when the wind starts to blow.
* Then, I got two kids pretending to be clouds. They banged into one another.......(acting)....they giggled and imagined the loud sound of thunder and flashes of lightnings!

d) Safety
* We saw pictures of places we should avoid when it rains. We should avoid tall trees, big spaces like a field and also in the swimming pool.
* We should take shelter in a safe building.
* Song Chuan and Eugene said that, there's a rod that will channel the lightning electrons to the ground.
* For this, I showed them a plug. I unscrewed it and showed them the colours of the three wires.Then, we learned about the Earth wire (green and yellow) which will channel the electrons to the Earth.

e) Experiment: Static Electricity
* This is similar to the concept that clouds when rubbed against one another, would produce ectricity and causes LIGHTNING.
* We took a plastic ruler, a cloth and some aluminium foil. We rubbed the ruler with the dry cloth. We counted until 50 seconds. The kids then saw how it attracted the aluminium foil.* Similar to magnet.

f) Our blooming flower.
* Yes! It has bloomed. It's purple and small. The kids could remember to water the plant. However, I reminded them to be cautious as too much water would cause overflow.