The Water Cycle

By River Binns | Published June 21st, 2026

Water is something we see and use everyday. We drink water, jump in puddles after it rains, and clean ourselves with water. But where does it really come from?

In nature, the water cycle is how water circles through every part of Earth. A cycle is a big circle, and there isn’t one start or end to the water cycle. A good place to begin would be in the atmosphere: clouds!

The big fluffy clouds in the sky are actually made from water. Except it’s not like the water you see everyday. The water you drink is in a state called liquid, but the water in clouds is in a state called gas. You might have seen water as a gas before if you’ve seen a pot of boiling water – the steam is actually water being released from the hot water.

But water can’t stay in clouds forever. Eventually, it comes back down from the sky in a process called precipitation. Precipitation is a fancy word that means rain, snow, or hail. Depending on the weather, temperature (how hot or cold it is), and where the water is falling, it can be snow on a mountain, or rain in a forest.

All the water that falls from the sky eventually ends up in streams that flow into rivers, which flow into the ocean, or into lakes and later the ocean. The water that you can see outside (streams, rivers, lakes) are called surface water. It’s water on the surface of the Earth!

Did you know that water doesn’t only flow on the surface? In secret places deep underground, ground water makes its way to the ocean as well. Some of this ground water comes back up to the surface, but some stays underground until it reaches the ocean.

Once water collects in the ocean, it goes back into the atmosphere, creating new clouds. Water is able to go back to being clouds through a process called evaporation. Evaporation is when liquid water turns into a gas. The sun helps make this happen with heat from sunlight. You can’t really see this process happen, but you can watch liquid water “disappear” if you put a small amount of water in a dish outside during a hot, sunny day. It can take a while, but eventually all the water will evaporate.

When water is back into the clouds, the cycle repeats! The water cycle makes sure that water is available and recycled throughout nature for every being, animals and plants included, to use so that they can live on our beautiful planet.

Sources:

https://uwaterloo.ca/earth-sciences-museum/educational-resources/just-kids/water-cycle

https://science.nasa.gov/kids/earth/what-is-the-water-cycle/

Cover Image from Pixabay