
PK-324: Katherine Jackson & Shaving Cream Rain Clouds
Season 3 Episode 119 | 15m 5sVideo has Closed Captions
Join Mrs. Lara at Camp Discovery!
Pre-Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lara, welcomes students back to Camp Discovery, a fun learning space packed with reading adventures & fun games!
Reading Explorers is a local public television program presented by Valley PBS

PK-324: Katherine Jackson & Shaving Cream Rain Clouds
Season 3 Episode 119 | 15m 5sVideo has Closed Captions
Pre-Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lara, welcomes students back to Camp Discovery, a fun learning space packed with reading adventures & fun games!
How to Watch Reading Explorers
Reading Explorers is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipMore from This Collection
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 27s)
PK-TK-693-The Most Magnificent Thing
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 26s)
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 28s)
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 28s)
PK-TK-690: The Very Clumsy Click Beetle
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 22s)
PK-TK-689: What Color is the Wind?
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 21s)
PK-TK-688: Pocket Full of Colors
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (25m 58s)
PK-TK-687: Dancing Through Fields of Colors
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 20s)
PK-TK-686: One World Many Colors
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (27m 13s)
PK-TK-685: School is Wherever I am
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 32s)
PK-TK-684: If I Built a School
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 21s)
PK-TK-683: The Pigeon Has to Go to School
Video has Closed Captions
Valley PBS presents Reading Explorers Lessons for Pre-Kindergarten and TK. (26m 22s)
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (lively music) - Hello, little learners.
Welcome back to our learning space.
My name is Miss Lara.
Can you tell me your name?
I'm so happy that you made it back today.
Now, today we have an exciting day planned, because we're going to continue with our science activities.
I wonder if we're going to get any visitors?
We're just so popular.
Now before we do that, let's sing our song to say hello.
Ready?
♪ Hello, how are you ♪ ♪ Hello, how are you ♪ ♪ Hello, how are you ♪ ♪ Let's sing something new now ♪ Now all this week, we've been going on a feelings hunt.
Now I've been using my binoculars.
Now, if you just joined us, our binoculars are actually made from tubes that you can use from like a paper towel roll or a toilet paper roll.
And what I've done is glued them together, and I painted them and added fancy decorations.
And so that they hang around my neck, I hole punched them and tied a piece of yarn to them.
So I'm going to get my binoculars on, and if you have your binoculars, get them on now too.
Now we're going to do a rhythm or a beat pattern to get our song going.
Then I want to clap your hands and pat your knees like this.
(clapping and patting) Can you do that while we sing?
Ready?
Here we go.
♪ We're going on a feelings hunt ♪ ♪ We need our binoculars ♪ ♪ I'm not scared ♪ ♪ Uh-oh, what do I see ♪ A frown and droopy, crying eyes.
Our friend is sad.
♪ Don't tell them to get over it ♪ ♪ You can't hide under it ♪ ♪ But we can help them through it ♪ What do we do when we're sad?
That's right, we cry, and then we breathe.
Are you ready?
(imitating crying) And (exhaling) breathe.
Breathing helps us feel better, doesn't it?
All right, next one.
♪ We're going on a feelings hunt ♪ ♪ We need our binoculars ♪ ♪ I'm not scared ♪ Look!
What do I see?
A smiling face with two bright eyes.
Our friend is happy!
♪ Don't tell them to get over it ♪ ♪ We'll let them enjoy it ♪ ♪ Maybe we can join them ♪ Now what do we do when we're happy?
We smile and we laugh.
We might even dance a little bit.
Let's do that.
Ready?
(laughing) And, (exhaling) breathe.
Last one.
♪ We're going on a feeling hunt ♪ ♪ We need our binoculars ♪ ♪ I'm not scared ♪ Look!
What do I see?
A sad mouth and two very sleepy eyes.
Our friend is bored.
♪ Don't tell them to get over it ♪ ♪ We can't hide under it ♪ ♪ But we can help them through it ♪ What do we do when we're bored?
That's right.
We yawn like this, and then we take a breath to feel better.
Ready?
(yawning) And (exhaling) feel better.
Now I'm going to take my binoculars and I want you to show me with your face how you're feeling.
Ready?
(humming fanfare) Ooh, I see lots of friend feelings.
So let's go through our visual schedule, and we'll see if your feelings change after you learn what we're doing today.
I'm going to put my binoculars safely away.
So we started with our emotional check-in.
So today we did a song about feelings, but I want you to check in with how you're feeling throughout the day.
Yesterday, I mentioned that our feelings are like the weather.
They just change all the time, especially when you're four and five years old.
Now we're going to do our weekly investigation.
We've had so many friends come visit us.
We're just too popular.
I wonder if anyone's going to come today?
And we're going to do a fun science experiment with some rain!
All right, then we'll sing our goodbye song.
Now we've had time to sing it all week.
We haven't run out, but if we do, we'll just wave and sing our song.
Sound like a good plan?
All right.
Now's about the time that-- (doorbell ringing) That's right!
Our doorbell!
Oh, who could it be today?
Let's see.
I'm coming.
It is, ooh!
It's our friend, Katherine Jackson.
Now Katherine Jackson is a different kind of scientist.
She's a mathematician.
Now you might recognize her story if you're a fan of a popular movie that was out that just won a big award called an Oscar.
So she was a mathematician for a space agency called NASA.
Now what's really cool about her is she's a girl and she's African-American.
So, and back when she was alive and going through school, being a girl and being African-American really stopped her from being able to do the things that she wanted to do, and pursuing math, and going to school, and going to college, but she did those things anyway.
And that's the kind of spirit and learning that I want you to take away from today.
So I'll tell you a little bit about her.
Katherine Jackson was born in West Virginia.
That's right.
She's from the United States.
So do you remember we're here in the city of Fresno in the United States.
Now she's from another place called the West Virginia.
And again, this map is flat, but we know that our world is a sphere, and it's constantly spinning around, isn't it?
Now she loved to help the community.
One of her favorite things was going to schools and visiting other young African-American students, and telling them her story, so that they could face the barriers that they were facing in school.
Here's a picture of her with her students.
She also won the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She was honored by President Barack Obama.
That's a big deal!
So here she is with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Isn't that neat?
Now, another thing I wanted you to learn about Katherine Johnson is that she was very, very good at school and she loved to count.
So when she was 15 years old, she started college.
Now people don't normally start college until they're in their twenties, so she was very young, and she graduated college when she was 18 years old.
So she really was very smart, and loved to read and count.
And in fact, one of the quotes I got from her was that she counted everything around her.
She counted door knobs.
She counted walls.
She counted spots on the floor.
She just loved to count!
Maybe that's something you can try.
So today for our fun experiment in our science lab, I thought we would take the spirit of Katherine Jackson and do a fun activity that would spark our curiosity and imagination.
Let's walk over that way.
So today we're making shaving cream rain clouds.
So the materials you'll need for this activity are a jar, some shaving cream, food coloring, and an eye dropper.
You'll also need some water.
Forgot to include that.
Now, if you don't have that with you now, you can hit pause now, grab those materials, and come back and watch this with me, or watch it at another time.
So safety first.
When you're a scientist, I'm gonna need my scientist jacket, my official jacket, and what this does is it protects my clothing from any stains.
And I'm going to replace my glasses with some official science goggles, and that protects my eyes.
Now for these experiments, you'll want to get an adult's help.
So I have my jar here filled with water.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to put some shaving cream on top.
Now this is shaving cream that you might have at home, or you can go to the store where everything's a dollar to get some shaving cream.
I give it a good shake so it's nice and foamy.
Are you ready?
I'm going to put it on top.
This alone is fun.
And this kind of looks like a cloud, doesn't it?
So if you can see it there, ooh, mine's pretty foamy.
All right.
So that's going to be our cloud that sits on top there in the air.
I have a little bit of water here in a cup, and I'm going to add three little droplets of food counting.
Maybe two more, three, two, yes, five.
Hey, will you count them with me?
Katherine Jackson would love us for that.
One, two, three, four, and five.
That's right.
And then I have the special tool called an eyedropper, and I actually just got it from something I had laying around the house, but it's really fun, because you squeeze the top, and kind of let it go.
And the liquid, it goes up like that.
So this is going to be a rain in the clouds.
Now this may take a little bit of trying, but you should start to see the rain come down.
Now I'm going to do it in the same spot just because of time, but you're going to want to put it all over.
So the process of rain, it's very interesting.
And actually all of our whole atmosphere follows the same process.
So water is recycled.
That means water is used over and over again.
In fact, if you see any rain, that water might've been in the ocean just two days earlier, if you can imagine.
So water from the ocean and from different plants hits the sun's rays and it evaporates, and it goes up into the air.
And then remember we talked about in our cloud in a jar, it creates condensation.
Oh, look it!
There it goes.
And that forms clouds.
Now the clouds get very heavy with this condensation, and then it starts to rain.
Now the fancy word for rain is precipitation.
So then the rain falls down to the ground, and then the process starts all over again.
Oh, you can kind of see it going there.
You know what?
I should have been counting how many eyedropper droplets we're putting in there.
So that's something you can do at home, parents.
This is very good for a math activity, and also for talking about different weather phenomenon.
All right, so you can kind of see it starting to rain.
It almost looks like a little bit of a storm, doesn't it?
I'm going to take my glasses off here.
So I hope that you try this experiment at home, boys and girls.
I want you to start to think like a scientist.
Ask questions.
What other things can you find out just by trying?
So, hmm, what makes the grass green?
What makes rainbows the color that they are?
There's so much to learn around you, and don't forget to use your imagination and think of different ways that you can solve everyday problems.
That's what Katherine Jackson did.
She worked on getting the first man in outer space.
That's pretty incredible.
Okay, so let's sing our goodbye song and then I'll review what we'll do tomorrow.
So we're going to sing our ABC song.
Ready?
Here it goes.
♪ A, B, C you later ♪ ♪ D, E, F, G, I'm gone to miss ya ♪ ♪ H, I have to go now ♪ ♪ J, K buh-bye now ♪ ♪ L, M, N, O I had a good time ♪ ♪ P, Q, R you gonna miss me ♪ ♪ S, T, U are my best friend ♪ ♪ V, W, X, Y, Z ♪ Oh, I can't wait until you come back tomorrow.
So tomorrow we're going to have the most fun experiment of all.
We're going to have exploding rainbows!
So I want you to start gathering your materials, so you can do them with me.
I'm using six plastic bottles.
I'm using dry yeast, food coloring, water, and, I think, what else am I using?
Oh, of course!
I'm using soap and I think some hydrogen peroxide.
We're gonna mix that all up, and see an explosive reaction.
Until then my friends, I want you to stay curious about the world around you.
I hope that you come back tomorrow for more fun.
Good bye, we'll see you later!
Bye friends!
(gentle music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪
Reading Explorers is a local public television program presented by Valley PBS