Embedded Files
Introduction
Introduction
In this activity, students will act out the water cycle. A roll of a die will direct students through a variety of paths and phases that water can take.
This is an ideal activity to pair with a lesson about runoff pollution and the way water gets filtered. Participants will learn there is no one path water takes. Instead, many processes affect how water moves around, through, and over the Earth.
This activity promotes awareness about healthy watersheds by helping participants learn how water moves through a system, and how it picks up, deposits, and filters pollutants.
This resource has been designed for students in Elementary and Middle School, but can easily be adapted to older or younger audiences. See our Adaptations section below for suggestions.
The Water Cycle Quick Guide
The Water Cycle Quick Guide
The Water Cycle Quick Guide - a PDF version you can print
Concepts to Explore: How is it possible that water from your faucet may contain water a dinosaur drank?
● Over time, the mass of water on Earth has remained nearly constant.
● Water can be found in three phases or states: solid, liquid, and gas.
● Water simply moves from one state to another, and from one place to another, through the processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff, and infiltration.
● 97% of the water on Earth is salty. Of the 3% left, 2% is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves 1% for all of humanity’s needs, agriculture, residential, manufacturing, community, and personal needs.
Suggested Books to Share: Did a Dinosaur Drink This Water? or Down Comes the Rain
Hands-On-Activity: Students will take on the role of water molecules and travel through the water cycle. Signs placed around the room depict places where water is found. First, students spread throughout the system. Then, a roll of a die directs them to their next position in the cycle. The processes of evaporation, condensation, melting, freezing, and the occasional sublimation, will carry them around the cycle. As participants continue to move through the water cycle, they may keep track of where they have been by completing a chart or with stickers on a “passport.” Even though the modelling of the cycle happens fairly quickly, in reality, some of these processes may take millions of years!
● The amount of water present at the beginning of the game is the same as at the end, just as the mass of water on Earth remains essentially the same.
Reflection: Don’t forget to ask your participants what they learned and how they can use their knowledge to take action for a healthy watershed!
Directions and Sample Lesson Plan
Directions and Sample Lesson Plan
Materials You Will Need *
Materials You Will Need *
● 9 dice – one for each station (We like these.)
● 9 signs – one for each station
● Copy of Did a Dinosaur Drink This Water? or Down Comes the Rain
● Water Cycle Poster available in English or Spanish
● Optional – “passports,” stickers for “passports” or a chart to record individuals’ movements through the water cycle
* A box containing all of these materials is available for Stewards to check out.
Directions
Directions
Preparation: Before you begin, set up your stations. Decide how long you will play, and whether individuals will take a certain number of turns or move through the cycle for a specific length of time.
Exploration: Begin by reading aloud the book Did a Dinosaur Drink This Water? (Available through Interlibrary Loan from Marina; read aloud here.) Or Down Comes the Rain; read aloud here. As you listen to the story, pay attention to the places where water goes. Can you imagine where water might pick up pollutants? Can you imagine how it might be cleaned again?
Further exploration: Refer to the Water Cycle Poster (English or Spanish versions). Ask students where they would find water in each phase: solid, liquid, or gas. Point out the ways water can change from one phase to another. Review key terms/concepts:
● Evaporation- process when a liquid changes to a gas or vapor
● Condensation- process when a gas changes to a liquid
● Freezing- process when a liquid changes to a solid
● Melting- process when a solid changes to a liquid
● Sublimation- process when a solid changes to a gas or vapor
● Filtration- process of separating particles by allowing certain things to pass through
Hands-On Activity: Students will pretend to be water molecules moving through the water cycle. A roll of the die will tell them where they will go next in their personal water cycle.
Assign students stations around the room. They may need to line up at the station to take their turn. Each turn involves rolling the die and by examining the sign at the station, determining the consequence of that number. Students then travel to their next destination, or remain where they are, depending on the roll.
To record their journeys through the water cycle, participants will record their travels on a chart or collect stickers for a passport from each station. (Please refer to the Adaptations section for some neat ways to modify this activity!)
When the game is over, gather students together to share what they experienced when they were participating in this activity. These questions might help spark a good discussion:
For younger audiences:
● Did anyone end up where they started?
● Did we lose or gain any water in our travels?
● Was anyone stuck for a long time at one station? How did that feel?
● Where could pollutants be picked up?
● Where could water be cleansed of pollutants?
For older audiences:
● How could water move to and from a parking lot? A stream? A human bladder? A glacier? An ice cube in a drink?
● How might different seasons affect the probability and process of moving?
● How might climate change affect the activity?
Reflection on the Activity and the Topic: The water in the Chesapeake Bay is very polluted. In Anne Arundel County, what actions can we take to prevent so much pollution from going into our local creeks and rivers? As Stewards of the Chesapeake Bay, why is it important to understand the water cycle?
Additional questions for reviewing key concepts:
● Where does the water come from when it rains or snows? (Water vapor in the air from evaporation)
● Where does the water that forms dew come from? (condensation of water vapor)
● How is the water we drink today still the same water that was here millions of years ago? (the same water cycles around and around)
● If you hang a dirty wet towel out to dry, what happens to the dirt? (water evaporates leaving the dirt behind)
Suggested Prompts for Different Age Groups:
● K-2 What are the three phases we find water in? (solid, liquid, gas)
● 3-5 What are the phase changes called? (evaporation, condensation, freezing, melting); How do we know there is water vapor in the air? (condensation on a cold beverage, dew)
● Middle School or High School: What causes the water to change phases? (energy is added or taken away) How does the water cycle and chicken farms affect water quality in the Bay? (Waste from animals can get washed into the bay when it rains)
Sample Lesson Plan
Sample Lesson Plan
Water Cycle Sample Lesson - click the link for a PDF of a sample lesson by Watershed Steward Nan Henry.
Adaptations
Adaptations
Adaptations for Different Audiences
Look at the grade band above and below your target audience to identify what might work for your group.
● K-2 Use pictures when possible or have older students accompany. Create simple “passports” in which they collect stickers for each station.
● 3-5 could use the passports as well. Students could create movements that accompany any of the songs about the water cycle such as this.
● Middle School students could share examples they have seen of the cycle. The concept of sublimation, water changing from solid directly to gas, can be introduced. This happens sometimes with glaciers. (They may have seen this with dry ice). Distillation, when a liquid evaporates leaving impurities behind, and is then condensed back into a liquid. The Chesapeake Bay can become saltier when water evaporates.
● High School should be familiar with sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides as pollutants in the air. When these mix with water (rain) they create a mild acid. This acidic rain affects the land and water where it falls. Evapotranspiration is the action of water leaving plant leaves as a result of photosynthesis.
● Mixed Age / Families Adults can assist younger children in creating the beads. Later, take turns telling stories, either as the facts of where the water traveled, or a fictional story from the point of view of the water.
● Adults enjoy this activity as well!
Adaptations for Different Formats
● This activity can work in an indoor or outdoor setting if there is an area in which to hang the nine station signs. You do need a lot of space, so keep that in mind!
● This activity can accommodate a variety of group sizes. There are nine stations. The larger the group, the more people wait at each station, but the wait would not be long.
General Suggestions
For Kinesthetic Learners – a great option for participants who learn best by moving is to have them act out the amount of energy that the water molecules they’re representing possess.
· The amount of energy a water molecule has determines its state.
· Water in a frozen state has less energy, so students at the Glacier station could stand very still with hand up shoulder high palms out to demonstrate crystalline water which has greater volume than liquid.
· Water molecules that are liquid could move holding their hands in front of them and wave them back and forth in a wavy flowy manner.
· Highly excited gas molecules could wave their hands back and forth over their heads.
* Middle and High School students should understand the concepts of particles and energy. Younger students may be confused by it, so this might not be the right adaptation for them.
Sticky Pollution – Use bits of colored tape to represent pollutants and stick them to students when they are water molecules travelling to a river or lake (when leaving a cloud as a raindrop). Then, remove them as they are cleaned by going to clouds (evaporation/distillation) or when travelling to ground water (filtration).
Water Cycle Bracelets – an alternative version of this lesson has students create a bracelet by collecting beads representing each station they have visited. In this case, provide a 15 cm length of string, gimp, or jute with a double knot at one end to each participant. Each station will have a cup with beads of a certain color indicating that process or location. As participants move to each station, they collect the colored bead at that station and add it to their string. (See below for a key to the colors.)
Additional beads for this activity:
· Black beads could represent pollutants picked up. The pink beads where it might be purified. The black and pink beads could be placed in a central location for pick up as participants require.
· You could also include yellow beads for when heat/energy was added and gray beads to show heat/energy being removed, depending on the level of understanding of the participants.
The completed strand of beads can be an end in itself and a souvenir of the activity. Alternatively, it can serve as a physical reminder of the participants’ journeys and used as the basis for telling a story, either orally or written. To adhere to the principles of reduce, reuse, recycle, the beads can also be collected at the end of the program, so they can be reused by another group.
Water Cycle Bracelets Color Chart
This chart shows the different colored beads you can use at the nine stations.
More About the Water Cycle!
More About the Water Cycle!
Additional Resources
How Does Your Water System Work?
An infographic about public water systems from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Great page about the Water Cycle from NASA with lots of resources.
Videos and Interactive Lessons from PBS Learning Media
From WSA
From WSA
WSA Resources Related to Water and the Water Cycle . . .
Virtual Options
Virtual Options
Check out the Google Slides presentation "The Water Cycle" created by Nan Henry. See how you can do this activity with your virtual audience!
Further Reading and Viewing
Further Reading and Viewing
Click this link for resources about the water cycle available at Anne Arundel County Public Libraries.
More books about the water cycle are available through Marina, Maryland's Interlibrary Loan Program. If you have a library card for AACPL, you can check out books through Marina!
Take Action
Take Action
What can you do to make a difference?
Plant a terrarium to show the recycling of water is a closed system.
Create a solar still to demonstrate water cycle. Check out examples here or here. Add grass and dirt to the water to be filtered to make it more authentic. This is how some people obtain potable water from the sea or other undrinkable sources.
Create signs in your neighborhood to encourage pet owners to pick up pet waste and dispose of it properly.
Develop ways in your community to slow down runoff, giving it a chance to spread out and soak in.
Page updated
Report abuse