Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

When I told Little Chef K we were going to read the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs he was very excited!  He enjoys watching the movies, and didn’t know there was a book that we could read.  This story starts with a Grandfather who tells his grandchildren about a town called Chewandswallow.  This town looks just like any other, but there aren’t any grocery stores and restaurants to have a kitchen.  The town has crazy weather 3 times a day.  What kind of weather?  You will have to read it to find out.  You, and your kids, won’t be sorry you read it.

I wanted to come up with some fun Science activities to go along with this book.

First we made a lava lamp.  You will need to following supplies:

• – Clear plastic bottle
• – water
•  – Vegetable oil
• – Food coloring
• – Alka-Seltzer (or other tablets that fizz)

Instructions:

• Pour water into the plastic bottle until it is about 1/3 full
• Add vegetable oil to the water until the bottle is almost full.  Let this sit.  After a few minutes you will notice the oil and water have separated.
• Add 10-12 drops of food coloring to the bottle.  The food coloring will go through the oil and mix with the water.
• Break an Alka-Seltzer tablet into 3-4 pieces.  Drop one of them into the bottle and see what happens.

Note:  If you add more tables to the bottle, the reaction will continue so you can enjoy this experiment longer.

We decided to add more tablets, stir the mixture and see what happened.  The mixture bubbled up to the top and made a lot of foam which Little Chef K thought was pretty neat.

Next we made a cloud in a jar.  I’m sorry that you can’t actually see the “cloud” in our jar, but it really is there.  For this experiment you will need:

• Black paper
• Gallon jar
• Colored warm water
• Matches
• Gallon size bag of ice

Instructions:

• Tape the black paper to the back of the jar, so you can’t see through the jar.
• Fill 1/3 of jar with colored warm water.
• Light the match and hold it over the jar opening.
• After a few seconds, drop the match into the jar and cover the top of the jar with the bag of ice.

What do you see?!?

We hope that you have a great time with these experiments this week as you read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  Make sure you check our other book reviews, and stay tuned for the next ones.