The Water Cycle

“Water is the Driving Force of All Nature”

Leonardo De Vinci

This week we put together a little mini unit on the water cycle! We did some fun science activities, crafts, and played with candy and shaving cream! Read on to find some ideas to use in your home.

Books

Books about weather and the water cycle are great, but for this particular lesson, I find videos and hands on activities to be so much more effective in understanding how water changes to different forms in the environment! Videos I recommend:

• The Magic School Bus – wet all over – available on Netflix or here on youtube
• Dr. Binoc water cycle – this is a short 3 minute video that explains the water cycle! We love Dr. Binoc’s videos because they are concise and kid friendly!

My three favorite children’s book:

• “Water is Water” – Miranda Paul- This book is a cute story about all the different forms that water can be. Have it read to you here.
• “All the water in the world” -George Ella Lyon – this storybook explains the water cycle in a story and how the earth needs water. Have it read to you here.
• “The Great Big Water Cycle Adventure” – Kay Barham – This is another cute story that follows the journey of water. I was not able to find a read aloud on this book but you can buy it from amazon here.

Water Cycle Experiments

I wanted to really help the kids understand what the cycle looks like hands on. So, we made a demonstration of the water cycle with candy! I found a great idea on another blog, and my kids were definitely into the project! We used graham crackers, marshmallows, and frosting, and sprinkles to to it.

We colored our frosting different colors to make it look like sky, grass, and water. This project was so much fun for my Kindergartner and 2nd grader!

This is my second grader’s version… she has “trees with snow” on the bottom, a lake to the left and it’s snowing. We also labeled the three main parts of the water cycle.. evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. We used the sprinkles to represent evaporation and marshmallow pieces to make snow as the precipitation.

You could use any food that you like! Have your kids brainstorm and get creative!

Water Cycle Bag

We also demonstrated the water cycle by doing a demonstration in a ziplock bag.

This project you can do with some simple supplies and some patience. All you need for this is water, food coloring, permanent marker and a ziplock bag! We drew a cloud and sun at the top of our bag, and my girls colored their water with blue and green.

Tape the bag to a sunny window. Let it sit for a few hours in the afternoon sun and watch some of the water evaporate into droplets! Then as it cools down in the evening, the droplets will “rain” back down into the water.

Shaving Cream

Who doesn’t love to play with shaving cream?

If you have a child on the younger side, they might enjoy setting up a large tray or plate with a shaving cream “cloud”.

I had my 6 year old draw her words, letters, and different shapes in the shaving cream.

Rain Cloud

Our next project was to create a cloud over the ocean by first coloring some water with blue food coloring, and then placing our shaving cream “cloud” on top of it.

We used a blue, almost clear container. We then took and eye dropper and squirted more food coloring water into the cloud to make it rain. This mostly just turned into my kids playing again with shaving cream and blue water outside, but it occupied them and was fun!

Additional Resources

There are many other water cycle projects and crafts that you can do. Another one that we did (the is also on my tpt store here) is to make a water cycle wheel!

For this, we printed out the template, and the girls colored the wheel. The wheel has an arrow that points to different sections of the cycle. We used a brass fastener to attach the arrow to the wheel.

The wheel comes with a separate chart, that lists all the parts of the cycle. We then played a game with it, where I would describe a section of the water cycle, and the kids would have to point their arrow to the correct part!

Also grab my freebie creative writing prompt about weather on my tpt store (click the picture to get it).

This was such a fun mini-lesson. We were able to learn SO much about the water cycle in just a few short days! Join us on our next adventure! If you missed our last unit on Ocean, you can find it here.