Evergreen Elementary

Environmental Education

Unit 2 – Water Basics

Lesson 2 – The Water Cycle

Hello, welcome to Evergreen Elementary Environmental Education, the website that creates lesson plans for you to teach your child about environmental science using STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math). If you haven’t already completed the Unit Vocabulary Project, head on over and check it out now!

Today we are learning about the water cycle. To understand the water cycle, I thought it would be fun to do activities! The first, a picture. The second, an experiment. If you want to, you can break this up into two days, one day for arts and crafts, and one day for science.

Activities:   

 

Show your students this Google Slide Presentation on The Water Cycle and then have students draw a picture. There’s a few different options for this.

  1. Have students follow along with you as you draw a picture on a poster board or a whiteboard
  2. Create an example like the one I did above (it was therapeutic to color)
  3. Print out this coloring page and have students color it in
  4. Print out this example and have students replicate it
The bare minimum for The Water Cycle should include:
  1. Precipitation – water that is following from the sky in liquid (rain) or solid (snow and hail) form
  2. Condensation – water that collects into tiny droplets in the sky after evaporation (usually clouds)
  3. Evaporation – water that is turning from liquid form to gas form (see States of Matter)
  4. A body of water – river, lake, pool, or ocean

My water cycle is really in-depth because later, we are learning about the ENTIRE water cycle (snow-melt, groundwater, river run off, and more). Sign up for my email list to be notified when this lesson drops!

Now that we understand the water cycle let’s watch it happen in live-action!

 

Experiment:

Water Cycle in a mason jar.

 

Supplies:

  1. Mason jar
  2. Boiling (or extremely hot) water
  3. Plate
  4. Ice
  5. Science Journal

 Steps:

  1. Pour boiling water into a mason jar
  2. Immediately place a plate over the mason jar 
  3. Put ice on top of the mason jar
  4. Write down the water cycle in your science journal!  
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