(cheerful music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to another pre-K and TK episode.

I'm so glad that you're here with me today.

I'm your teacher, Mrs. Lara, hello.

This week, we're learning all about the weather and it's day three of the five days that we're going to be together on this topic.

So let me add one magnet to the top and one on the top, two on the bottom together make, three, that's right.

Now we have a lot of fun things planned around the weather.

Today we're gonna actually watch a video story about "Thunder Cake", and then we're gonna make some storm art using shaving cream.

So I hope you stick around for the whole thing, but let's get started with the song, which is one of my favorite ways to get started with our day.

Remember we do one in English and then we do one in Spanish because I love to teach you different languages.

Okay, here's our English one.

♪ What's the weather ♪ ♪ What's the weather ♪ ♪ What's the weather like today ♪ ♪ Is it sunny ♪ ♪ Is it rainy ♪ ♪ Is it windy out today ♪ ♪ What's the weather ♪ ♪ What's the weather ♪ ♪ What's the weather like today ♪ ♪ Is it sunny ♪ ♪ Is it rainy ♪ ♪ Is it windy out today ♪ What's the weather where you are.

It's a little warm here.

I probably shouldn't be wearing a sweater, but I like it a lot.

Hey, now let's do our Spanish song.

We're learning words in Spanish together.

So the first word that we learned was llueva, llueva means to rain, llueva.

And then we learned nina, nina is a girl.

Today we're gonna learn cueva.

Cueva, that means cave.

In our song a little girl is in a cave, probably hiding from the rain.

Are you ready to sing with me?

Here we go.

(sings in Spanish) I hope that you enjoy learning new words in Spanish and English, because I'm gonna introduce you to a few right now.

Let's look behind the door.

Ooh, our story, "Thunder Cake" has lots of words that we can learn.

And I picked three.

The first one is luscious.

Can you say luscious with me.

Luscious, special letter L, that means it smells or tastes really good.

(sighs) In our story there are some delicious, luscious tomatoes that are gonna go inside of a cake.

I know I pick the strangest tales.

The next word is a word that starts with the letter I.

And it's ingredients, say that me, ingredients.

It's a long word, isn't it?

And ingredients are all of the things that go into making something.

So let's say that you're making pancakes, the ingredients are the eggs and the flour and sugar and anything else you need to mix together to make the pancake.

So ingredients is gonna come up because our lady, our character is going to be mixing and making a cake.

And she's gonna ask her granddaughter to gather the ingredients.

The last word is a word that you may have heard before.

You might have even tried one out in your kitchen.

It's special letter R for a recipe, say it with me recipe.

That's right.

A recipe are instructions on how to prepare something.

So using my example of pancakes, a recipe is gonna tell you step by step by step.

What to add to your pancakes, what to add next.

If you're supposed to stir or mix, in my case at the bottom, do not burn Mrs. Lara, 'cause I burn all of my food.

I know, I know.

So those are the words that you need to look for when we watch our video story.

So get your listening ears on.

Turn your brain power way up because we are going to watch the story of "Thunder Cake" together right now.

(mystical music) It's story time.

"Thunder Cake", a classic tale by Patricia Polacco retold by Mrs. Lara.

(thunder roars) One summer day, the air was death and heavy, storm clouds stripped it over the fields and thunder made the window panes shutter.

A little girl and her babushka, which is grandmother in Russian, looked on at the storm from inside their house.

The little girl was frightened by all the noise and ran under her babushka skirt.

"Child you come out from under my skirt.

"It's only thunder your hearing," babushka said.

"This is thunder cake baking weather."

"Thunder cake?"

The little girl asked.

Babushka showed the little girl the recipe and said, "Before we gather ingredients will need to know how far away the storm is."

"When you see lightning start counting real slow.

"When you hear thunder, stop counting, that number is how many miles away the storm is."

And off they went to find ingredients.

They were near the barn when a huge bolt of lightning flashed, the little girl counted to 10 and babushka said, see, the storm is 10 miles away.

Even though she was scared the little girl gathered eggs from mean old Nellie peck.

(chicken clucks) Lightning flashed again, the little girl counted to nine, nine miles said babushka.

The little girl gathered milk from old kick cow.

(cow mows) She was still very frightened.

She saw another flash of lightning and counted to eight this time.

Then they got the flour, sugar, chocolate, and a secret ingredient, tomatoes from the dry shed.

The lightning flashed again.

It was closer than ever.

The little girl counted to five.

(thunder roars) They returned home, mixed their ingredients and bake the cake.

Babushka said, "You were so brave to gather those ingredient."

The little girl felt braver making and eating thunder cake with her babushka had made her realize that thunder was just a noise.

It turns out that noise wasn't as scary after all.

So I hope you like the story of "Thunder Cake".

Did you recognize that thunder cake was a special recipe that was made when the little girl felt very scared of the storm?

Is there some special thing that you do when you're scared?

When I'm scared I also like to get a nice warm cup of milk and I like to put a little chocolate in it and I guess I should call it thunder milk.

Maybe there's a special food or item that you use.

Now I want you to think back to this story, the story has a sequence.

It's like a recipe, it happens in an order.

First, something happens then in the middle, remember there was gathering the ingredients and then at the end something happened.

So we're gonna review the sequence of the story together by watching a video.

Now in the video, I'm gonna ask you some questions and you're gonna have to really use your thinking to remember what we just saw.

Okay, let's watch the video together.

(thunder roars) "Thunder Cake" by Patricia Polacco, retold by Mrs. Lara.

(soft music) In the beginning of thunder cake, two characters, babushka and a little girl heard a thunderstorm coming.

(thunder roars) The little girl was scared.

The thunderstorm was very loud.

How do you feel when you hear thunder and lightning.

To help the girl feel better, babushka decided to make thunder cake.

What makes you feel better when you're scared?

Next babushka took out her recipe and asked the girl to gather the ingredients.

Let's see what ingredients did she gather?

She gathered eggs from mean old Nellie pecking.

(chicken clucks) And milk from old kick cow.

(cow mows) From the dry shed, she got chocolate and flour and of course, sugar to make the cake extra sweet.

Then obviously tomatoes, tomatoes in a cake.

Whoever heard of such thing.

Let me check the book.

Still checking.

I guess thunder does have tomatoes.

Would you eat a cake with tomatoes.

In the end, babushka and the little girl make and eat their thunder cake.

How did the little girl feel at the end of the story?

That's right.

She felt brave.

What makes you brave?

So did you remember all of the parts of this story?

The beginning, the middle and the end.

And I loved that question at the end.

What makes you brave?

I want you to really talk about that with any adult that's around you, ask them what makes them brave?

So remember being able to retell a story is an important foundational skill to becoming a strong reader and in early learning we say, you think, but you also learn by doing.

So we have a very special activity that we need to get to, but I'm gonna go over the materials with you so that you're ready to do it alongside with me.

So we're gonna be making some storm art today in our project place.

So the materials that you're going to need are black paint.

Now I went to the place where everything's a dollar and got a little tube of black paint.

And I also got some white paint.

Can you think of why we might need those two colors?

That's right.

We're gonna mix them to make a storm cloud, a big gray one.

We're going to need some foil.

Grownups use this to wrap up food and to keep things warm.

So see if you have any left in your kitchen.

We're going to need some paper.

Now I always keep little scraps of paper and I kind of put them in a little box so that I have supplies for art later.

But for today's activity, if you want yours to look like mine, you'll need blue, yellow, and white paper.

And lastly you'll need some scissors and you'll need a paint brush.

You can also use nature's paint brushes, your fingers.

But today I guess we'll keep things clean.

All right, let's go over to our project place so we can start work on our storm art.

Here we go.

So you have all of your materials and this is what it's going to end up looking like, see if my rain and my clouds stay.

Do you see there's some raindrops and some lightning and you can see the reflection of the foil.

So I'll tell you what the first step is.

You're going to wanna grab your piece of paper.

Now I'm using paper that's a little thicker.

We call it card stock.

It's almost like a thin cardboard.

You can use printer paper that really thin kind, but it's really better to use something that's a little bit thick.

Next time gonna take my piece of foil.

And I have an important decision to make.

Will I use this flat part that looks matt, that means it's not a shiny, or will I use the really shiny part?

What do you think?

Which one should I use?

The shiny one?

Okay, you must know I love shiny things.

So we're gonna cut our foil to about the size of our paper.

So it looks like I might need to trim this one down.

I'm gonna put my paper right on top.

Grab my scissors, put the thumb through the thumb hole, the other fingers on the bottom and then I'm gonna chop around.

Just kind of go around.

Now if your child is already past the point of knowing numbers and you're looking for a way to challenge them, measurement is a great way.

Even if they can't understand the concept of inches or centimeters yet, you certainly can give an approximation.

You can use non-standard measurements as well.

How many paper clips across with this paper be?

Can you draw a box on the foil that's the same number of paper clips?

That can be a whole activity in and of itself where you're really extending the learning.

So much of what we do as parents and as teachers, isn't so much about the end product, but about the process of getting there.

It looks like I need to trim just a little bit more here.

That's about right.

You could also fold it over.

A shiny part and look, it's all crinkly.

Next, I'm gonna take a glue stick.

You can take some liquid glue if you like, but the glue stick does take a shorter amount of time to dry.

And since I'm here in the studio, I don't wanna be waiting and waiting and waiting for things to dry.

I would not like to do that.

Hey, well, I'm just gonna add some stripes across to really get that glue and then on the edges.

And then I'm going to put my foil on top of the paper and flatten it out so it really sticks on there.

There we go.

And this is what you're going to be left with, a canvas or a place where you can start your painting.

Now, before we start our painting, I wanna recommend that you have a piece of paper or a table cloth, or that you do this activity outside because like many of the activities we do together, it's messy, messy, messy.

So now when you have everything around you protected, you can go on to the next step, which is to get something to hold your paint.

Now you could do it right on wherever you are, if it's protected, but I like to use cups and then you you're gonna get shaving cream.

That's what you wanna use.

You can just use paint, but I thought, ooh, I'll make it extra special and add some texture.

Don't you love how shaving cream looks like a cloud when it comes out.

So here's my cup.

And I'm going to add some shaving cream in there.

Oops, first take the lid off Mrs. Lara.

Hello, take its hat off.

Look, there it goes.

Getting big and fluffy and what this is gonna do, it's gonna make the paint fluffy too.

I'm gonna use two colors, black and white.

(chuckles) It almost looks like ice cream, but do not eat it.

Do not, do not.

Which one should be white.

Should it be the left or the right?

I think it should be the right because it kind of rhymes with white, right, white.

Okay, I'm gonna add some paint, close the lid because we don't want it to dry and then add some black paint to the other one.

Now my partner, Mrs. Reed Wright, talks a lot about hue and value and a lot of other art concepts.

And I was thinking about her as I was mixing the colors and thinking she would talk about how each, mixing these two colors together would make a different color, a different value and shade.

Here's my white, can't really see it 'cause the shaving cream's white.

(chuckles) But we do need it.

Here's the black.

Oh, this one you can really tell, it gets deep and dark.

It almost looks like a storm cloud.

Right, now that we have our two colors, I want you to think what does a storm cloud look like?

Maybe go outside.

Clouds come in all shapes and sizes.

A storm cloud is a special color because it's full of rain that's about ready to drop.

So when I went outside today, I saw clouds that were fluffy and round and there was some flat clouds too.

It did not look like it was going to rain.

It looked really sunny.

So I had to use my imagination and think.

Okay, what would storm clouds look like?

So I'm adding some white all around to my sky to make it look like a cloud.

It smells a lot like shaving cream in here.

(chuckles) That's part of the experience.

You can actually add a little bit of spice in here, or you can add some glitter, anything that you think the children would react to.

They love things that are different like that.

Next, since we don't want it to be a sunny sky and right now it's pretty white, I'm gonna add black or gray in here.

Ooh, look at that.

Now you'll notice that as you run your brush across parts of the foil will start to come up so that it looks like a silvery sky underneath some storm clouds.

Now I told you, you could use paint brushes.

I wanna stay clean, but you can also use your fingers.

That would be an amazing sensory experience.

Get in there, do some finger painting.

All right.

Now, as I'm adding the shaving cream and the paint, I'm noticing that the colors are mixing together to make a very dark gray, which is what reminds me of what we saw on "Thunder Cake", which is the storm clouds there.

I might add a little bit more white here.

There we go.

There's a lot of texture in here.

That means you can feel it when it dries, it'll dry and you'll be able to run your hand across it.

All right, let's see.

That's kind of what I came up with.

Yours might look completely different.

So looks pretty marbly like a storm, but we really wanna make this look like there's some rain and some lightning.

So that's where our paper comes in.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is make some rain drops.

So I'm gonna grab my dark blue and my light blue paper and I'm gonna cut it up into some raindrops.

You'll have to think.

What do raindrops look like?

Hmm, if it's dropping from the sky, it kind of looks like a circle that's been stretched out like this.

But you can make your raindrops however you like.

The little tip is, if you add them and kind of press them in, when it dries, they'll get stuck on there and you don't need to add glue.

So let's add a few more raindrops.

How many should I add?

I did one.

I'll show you the shape in just a minute.

See, my raindrops look like this.

Almost like tears.

Gonna add that.

I think I'm gonna add six raindrops.

I'm gonna add three light blue and three dark blue.

Maybe your raindrops can be purple.

They come from a purple cloud.

Okay, let's do some dark blue raindrops.

There we go.

I have a little tip.

If you want your raindrops to all look the same as you kind of have to stack them up, stack the paper on top of each other.

There you go.

But I want mine to look different.

So I'm gonna put some over here, kind of space them out and press it in.

And another good thing about pressing it in is the oils of the shaving cream will kind of get absorbed and soaked into the raindrops as you press them in.

So they start to get transparent and have a different look.

Okay, let's see.

I have one, two, three, four, five.

And I want six.

So how many more do I need?

Five, I want, one more.

One more dark blue.

I'm gonna make this an extra large raindrop from the extra large cloud.

Get that raindrop.

(sighs) I'm gonna put it down here.

Okay, next we need some lightning.

You can't really make thunder, but when you're finished with this, maybe you can act out thunder with whoever your audience is that you're showing your art to.

And say, I'm doing this because I read a book called "Thunder Cake" with Mrs. Lara, and it was all about a lightning storm and thunderstorm and about being brave.

My dog Luna, hates lightning and thunder, and I can understand why, a lot of noise.

So this is what my lightning looks like.

What I did is I made a zigzag shape like this and I cut it out the same on the other side, and then just had the two points meet.

So I'm gonna add it here.

Let's add one more before I go to my recommended story and we finish our time together.

All right, this one I'm gonna make a little smaller.

And up and down.

I'm gonna put it right over here.

Ooh, look at, there is my storm art.

Now I can put it out for those to see and talk about the book "Thunder Cake."

And maybe if you're feeling and brave, you can actually draw the little girl and her nonna on there.

Maybe even a cake with tomatoes so that you can tell the full story.

Now I love sharing books with you, but it's often true that we run out of time.

So I have a recommended book that I'd like to share.

It's called "Pitter Pattern".

Now a lot of the activities that I do can be extended to include math.

And that's the best way to learn when you're three, four and five years old, do the activity and embed math skills and literacy skills all in something that children love to do.

So this book, of course, it's all about the ring, but it has some silly words and patterns, like in this window, there's a pattern of shapes in the trees and there's a pattern in the dog and even in the food that you eat.

So I hope that you check this book out to continue the theme or study of the weather.

Looks like our time is up.

So I hope you have a beautiful day wherever you are, big smooch.

See you next time.

Good bye.

(cheerful music)