Storms!

This week we have been learning all about rain and clouds, and this morning we were learning about something else - storms! We listened to the sound of a thunderstorm and talked about it. We thought about the words to describe what we could hear, like crashing thunder and heavy rain. We talked about the lightning - Maddie said "you can't hear lightning, you just see the light of it." We then talked about what lightning looks like and looked at some different pictures of storms showing amazing lightning. We learnt that during a storm you see the lightning before you hear the thunder. Sometimes when there's a thunderstorm there's rain too. We talked about how we feel when there's a thunderstorm - some of us said we feel scared, and we talked about why that might be. For some people it's the loud noise of the thunder which makes us jump!

We listened to a poem about a thunderstorm and joined in with actions - wiggling our fingers to show rain and banging our palms on the floor when the thunder came!

Then we explored the musical instruments and talked about how we could make some stormy music. First, we thought about rain. What instruments would be good for making the sound of rain? We chose rainsticks, shakers, Chinese wood blocks and cabassas. We explored how we could play them and make them sound like rain.


Then we talked about the storm - what instruments would be good to show the sound of thunder? We chose drums, tambourines and cymbals. Sometimes thunder is a low, rumbling sound and sometimes it's a crashing sound!

Everyone chose an instrument to play that represented the rain or the thunder. We looked at some picture cards showing the sun, rain and a storm. When we see the sun picture, there is no storm and we don't play our instruments - we are silent! When we see the rain card, the people with rain instruments have to start play, quietly and slowly. Then as the card is lifted higher, the noise of the rain has to get louder - we have to play our instruments harder and more loudly! When the storm card is shown, the storm players have to play their instruments, while the rain players are still playing. Then the storm goes away, so the storm people stop playing their instruments. The rain players keep playing as the card is moved lower, showing them they have to start playing more quietly. Finally, the sun card is shown again and we are all silent - the storm has gone!

We have also been busy making rainsticks this week. We decorated our tubes with lots of colours, then filled it with rice or pasta. When you move it you can hear the sound of rain!

In our Play and Learn time we were exploring different ways of making stormy scenes. Some of us were busy on the making table making fantastic stormy pictures. We used straws to blow the paint - it was great fun! We also had the boats and the playmobile people in the water tray and pretend there was a storm - if there was a storm at sea the boats would rock in the waves and the people might fall out! Rhys also chose to use the cards we had used in music. Ollie, Trystan and Harry played instruments and Rhys held up the cards to show them how to play.