Have you read this book Library Lion? If you haven’t, you should! If you have, you should read it again! (It really is that good.) Is a lion solid, liquid, or gas? What about a library? What about books? See what states of matter you can find as you listen to the book.

You might be familiar with clouds because you have seen them in the sky many times! Did you know clouds are made of matter? The parts of clouds you can see are made of tiny solids (baby ice crystals) and tiny liquids (baby water droplets). They are so small and light they can float in the air. Clouds are also made of water vapor and air, which are gases, and invisible! Pretty cool, right?

Bonus: Look to our mountains in the afternoons. You might see some AWESOME cumulonimbus clouds, especially as summer gets closer! Use these instructions to make a cloud mobile with some simple things from your house. Don’t worry if you don’t have the exact supplies…get creative and use what you have! Get your grownup’s permission and make some cloud art!

Do you know how to play “Red Light, Green Light”? If you’re not sure, click on this link to watch an explanation. Light isn’t really a form of matter, BUT you can play a new version of this game with states of matter! Ask some family members to play with you, or you can practice moving around like a solid, liquid, or gas by yourself.

Instead of “Red Light, Green Light,” you can play “Solid, Liquid, Gas.”

Like this:

• Red Light = Solid. Solids hold their shape, which means they don’t move.
• Yellow Light = Liquid. Liquids can move, but they are not as fast as gas!
• Green Light = Gas. Gas moves quickly! It goes crazy!

Let’s review 3 states of matter with a song! You can watch this video to help you review solids, liquids, and gases. For an added bonus, you can dance, too! Notice how the speed of the music changes… the music moves slowly for solids, a little faster for liquids, and very quickly for gases. In real life, the atoms in a solid (like your chair ) do not really move because are very close to each other. The atoms in a liquid (like juice) are a little more spread out and can move past each other. But the atoms in a gas have lots of room to move, and they do!