We live in a tropical climate – we have two seasons; Wet Season and Dry Season.  In the Dry Season we have blue skies, blue skies and more blue skies.  In the Wet Season (including the build up to the Wet) we have clouds, clouds and clouds.  We love the change.

I have used “clouds” a lot in our family.  First of all they provide great car/travelling entertainment.  We look out the window and all call out what we can see.  This isn’t a particularly well-mannered time – we often all speak at the same time!  If someone hears someone else say something really interesting like “A chicken sitting on Daddy’s Hat” we will hear “where, where, where?”  Then the one who saw such a thing will have to try and convince their family that such a thing is out there in the clouds.  It is huge fun!  (But the driver has to concentrate a little on the road!)

Then came our arty, perfectionist child who would get upset whenever her artwork went wrong.  This hit our house about the time the Dry Season started so I said to her, remember the clouds and as we drove along things changed didn’t they?  Well, that is just like your artwork.  You are going along and things change.  You can decide to not play any more because the cloud doesn’t look like a dog or you can keep playing and see an elephant with an angel on its back.  What is more fun?  Keep playing!  The same with your artwork, you can stop painting; which you love, because there is an extra splodge on your paper or you can go with the change and see what amazing piece of art you can come up with.  Your choice!  Sometimes she would pack up and that is fine.  The emotional trauma was too much for her – but she would have to spend some time doing nothing.  I wasn’t going to have her jump from activity to activity just because of her choices.  Eventually she saw the fun in changing things, in making things happening because of an accident.  We still have to work on this one – it is a part of her personality that needs to be tampered with Grace. 

Then the Wet Season comes again.  Not only do we have those lovely fluffy clouds in the sky that stimulate our imagination we also get storms.  Big fierce, lightning, thunder, black skies storms.  When the kids were little these storms frightened them, afterall, they hadn’t been around for the last 9 months why turn up now!    Thanks to the FIAR unit on “Storm in the Night” we learnt about storms, about power black outs, about not being afraid.

Just the other day, I was checking the Bureau of Meteorology for local weather forecasting, as we are expecting lots of rain due to a cyclone out on the coast, I saw an intriguing link.  I just had to go there!  Cloud Appreciation Society.  What is that!  This is an amazing site.  There is a group of people who actually appreciate clouds.  They take photos of clouds.  They know all about clouds.  They write about clouds.  WOW! 

The timing of this is just perfect as we are about to study “Storm in the Night” again, and probably for the last time.    As I checked out the “cloud of the month” pages and photographs I just loved the way this Appreciator wrote about his subject.  The personification, the knowledge, the passion all came out.  This is where we are going to be for our writing lessons over the next few weeks! 

Maybe we should belong to the Cloud Appreciation Society!