designed by Tracie Talluto

There are at least 5 animals hidden in this picture. Can you find the shapes in these clouds? Here are two suggested ways to carry out this activity: Make a list of the shapes you find. Then go to ANSWERS. Print out a copy of this picture and color the animals you think are in it. What animals are they? Then go to ANSWERS.

Looking for Shapes in the Clouds?

A How The Weatherworks Activity for National Sky Awareness Week - April 22 - 28, 2001

Most of us, at one time or another, have looked up to the clouds and imagined that we saw shapes that resembled things with which we were familiar. Perhaps it was an animal, like the above activity. Or, it might have been a person's face, a letter of the alphabet, or something else. You were doing nephelococcygia. The phonetic pronunciation for the word (with a "thank you" to Irene Holtz) is

To understand what nephelococcygia means, we turn to "The Birds," a play by Aristophanes (written in 414 B.C). In this play, birds see shapes in the clouds. Another character basically tells them that are crazy for imagining this...hence the term nephelococcygia or cloud cuckooland!

To the left is a photograph which I took near the Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state several years ago. To some it looks like a flying elephant (trunk to the right); to others it is a dragon (curved tail to the right).

Here is a challenge to anyone reading this page, especially classes involved in the National Sky Awareness Week school data exchange project. Just like shapes hidden in the clouds, how many words can you find hidden in

NEPHELOCOCCYGIA?

Rules are as follows (but you can adapt for your own local school use):

	Allowed	Not Allowed
	Words of 3 letters or more	Abbreviations
	Plurals	Acronyms
	Multiple tenses	Non-English words

Make your list either as an individual or as a school class. You may use dictionaries, encyclopedias, the Internet, or any other source of information. If you include an unusual word, please provide a definition and its source.

Then send your list (developed according to our rules shown above) via e-mail to the address below. Include your name(s), school name, and age/grade. We'll concatenate (merge or bring together) the lists that we receive and create a master list. That will be posted to this web site by the end of Sky Awareness Week 2001. I will also post the name of the person or the class that submits the longest list of correct words.

Happy cloud word searching. Have fun!!!!

© H. Michael Mogil and Barbara G. Levine, 1997-2000

This suggested activity was last updated on May 9, 2000

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E-mail to HOW THE WEATHERWORKS. hmmogil@weatherworks.com