Rain Sticks

We've been making rain sticks in art, which are musical instruments from Peru. They're hollow tubes, usually filled with pebbles. When they're turned vertically, the pebbles run down the tube, making a sound like rain. Traditionally, they're made from a dried cactus with the spikes pushed in. As the pebbles hit the spikes, they make the sound.

We didn't have any cacti at our school, so Miss J gave us each a cardboard tube instead. We glued paper over one end to seal it, then scrunched and rolled some aluminium foil and put it inside the tube. Carefully, we tipped in some rice, beads and dried pasta, then sealed the other end up. We practised turning our rain stick over and it really did sound like rain! 

Using paper mache, we covered the tube with a few layers and left it to dry. Today, we added some layers of paint as a base coat and we're going to be decorating them with patterns, beads, wool and feathers. They're going to look fantastic!

We're learning all about water this term. We watched a movie about the water cycle and learned that water is constantly moving through a cycle and has been doing it for millions of years. The water that we drink from the tap could be the very same water that dinosaurs and cavemen drank!

There are four main stages in the water cycle:

• Evaporation - water droplets are heated and then turn into water vapour which floats up towards the sky
• Condensation - the water vapour turns into clouds and the wind blows them around the sky
• Precipitation - the clouds release the water as rain, snow or hail and it falls back to the earth
• Collection - the water pools together and runs to low places, such as rivers, oceans and lakes

The water cycle then starts all over again when the water evaporates into the air.

Love from The Smarties and Mrs N