The Water Cycle

Another word for rain is precipitation. Where does rain come from Another word for rain is precipitation. Where does rain come from? How does it get into the cloud? We are going to listen to a story about a raindrop called Drippy and his Water Cycle adventure. Let’s see what this story tells us about water and how it moves.

The water cycle is made up of a few main parts: evaporation condensation precipitation Collection Drippy the Raindrop will tell us of his water cycle adventure.

Evapouration Evaporation is when the sun heats up water in rivers or lakes or the ocean and turns it into vapor or steam. The water vapor or steam leaves the river, lake or ocean and goes into the air.

Hand Sanitiser Evaporation experiment Does it make your hands wet? Does if make your hands feel cold? What happens when you wave your wet hands in the air? The wind caused their hands to feel colder by causing the sanitizer to evaporate more quickly.

Condensation Condensation is water vapor in the air that gets cold and changes back into liquid, forming clouds. You can see this at home when you take a shower and the windows and mirrors in the bathroom fog up.

Drippy falls to earth as R_ _ _ . Can you think of any other forms of water that fall from the sky when the clouds get heavy?

Precipitation Precipitation occurs when so much water has condensed that the air cannot hold it anymore.  The clouds get heavy and water falls back to the earth in the form of rain, hail, sleet or snow.

Collection Collection is when water falls back to earth as precipitation, it may fall back in the oceans, lakes or rivers or it may end up on land.

What do you think happened to Drippy? Where does Drippy go next in the water cycle? How does the water get back into the sea?

Worksheet: Use the worksheet to draw pictures of drippy going through the water cycle. Draw the pictures in the correct order.

Experiment: You must observe and record on your checklist : What happens to the inside of the plastic bag? Do you think the sun caused this to happen?

Story of Drippy the Raindrop “Adventures to the Mountains” Written and illustrated by Joel M. Kimball [Online] Available at: http://www.drippytheraindrop.com/DrippysWorldTrialStories/ToMountainsAndBack/Entry.htm Accessed: 20th April 2012