WATER CYCLE

LESSON
Day 3

We read the book, IT LOOKED LIKE SPILT MILK  by Charles Shaw. After reading the book, we review the names of the cloud formations. I take the students outside on a day when the sky is filled with a large number of cumulus clouds. I have them lie on the ground and become cloud observers, noting types of clouds and even objects they "imagine" in the clouds.

TIME: 10 minutes

Experiment with Heat

Today's experiment will show how heat causes the water to rise up. I will take a small pot filled with water and let it begin to boil. Above the pot, I will hold a pie tin. The steam will collect on the pie tin and it will start raining. I introduce the term heat and compare the small burner to the sun. We will label our bulletin board with the term heat and place it under the sun.

MATERIALS NEEDED: A small electric burner. A small cooking pot. A pie tin. Water.
TIME: 5 minutes

Activity
Disneyland Trip
RAIN   OR   SHINE ?
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
(picture)
sun
or 
cloud
(picture)
sun
or 
cloud
(picture)
sun
or 
cloud
(picture)
sun
or 
cloud
(picture)
sun
or 
cloud

DAILY: We will go to Intellicast to find out if it is cloudy or sunny.
DAILY: We will graph sunny or cloudy on our web site. We will do this by adding a sun or a cloud  each day as we check the cloud cover for Los Angeles.
 (Los Angeles)

TIME: 2 minutes
 
 


Daily Activities

Daily: Check our water, mark the water line. We discuss what is happening to our water in a group.
Daily: We graph today's weather on our classroom graph.
Daily: The students check the Weather Bug and graph today's temperature on our daily temperature graph. (web)
Daily: We discuss and note our observations in a classroom journal as we look at our classroom terrarium.

TIME: 10 minutes

CRAFT

We will let our imaginations find shapes and objects in the clouds. Following the discussion of the clouds and the different objects the clouds can become, I  will pass out a white sheet of construction paper. The students are instructed to tear it into a shape. After they have torn out their shape, they glue it on a sheet of dark blue construction paper. The paper says, "Sometimes it looked like a..." The students will finish writing the sentence. An example of this is, "Sometimes it  looked like a large tree." We put up an It Looked Like Spilt Milk bulletin board. The kids hang their cloud pictures on the board. Our visitors love looking at this board. It is a great conversation piece.

MATERIALS NEEDED: Blue sheet of construction paper. White sheet of construction paper.
TIME: 10 minutes
 
 



Back to the Water Cycle              Link to Lesson 4