The Water Cycle & Clouds

Happy Friday, friends! And happy {early} birthday to Amy, my team teaching partner! The kids and I threw a little surprise party for her! And she really had no idea!! YES!!! They spoiled her like crazy with lots of cards, notes, chocolate, gifts and gift cards! She felt so special! We truly have the best families ever!!!

 

We have been having lots of fun learning about the water cycle and clouds this week! We read The Water Cycle, which is perfect for our 2nd graders!

 

 

Then we taught them the water cycle song which they LOVE! This is seriously the most enthusiastic class when singing this song! So I recorded them, but I cannot get my video to load :( Not even the sound!! BOO! They sound adorable!! Anywho, the song goes to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Around the Mountain." It goes:

 

Water travels in a cycle, yes it does!
Water travels in a cycle, yes it does!

It goes up as evaporation,
It forms clouds as condensation,
It falls down as precipitation, yes it does!

 

We made a model of the water cycle, which I forgot to photograph {seems to be a bad habit of mine lately!} We discussed each part of the water cycle and illustrated it. Then I found the coolest, easiest idea on Pinterest to show the kids how it rains! They know that the clouds are made of droplets of water, and when the drops get heavy, it begins to rain. So with a glass of water, shaving cream and food coloring we made it rain!!

 

 





Just squirt shaving cream in the water. This is your "cloud." Then tell the kids that food coloring represents droplets of water in the clouds. Wait a few seconds, and the food coloring will come through the shaving cream and it will start to "rain"! The kids loved this! It was the perfect demonstration!

 

Oh, I must throw in that Bill Nye has a great water cycle video. He always does a great job at explaining and showing scientific ideas to kids. Plus, they just love him :)

 

We had our kids illustrate and write about the water cycle as an assessment. They did great!

 

 

{I forgot to take a pic of the 2nd page of writing!! Whoops!}

 

Today we learned about clouds! We read The Cloud Book  by Tomie DePaola. I LOVE this book! We also read some other nonfiction cloud books. We brainstormed characteristics we learned about the following clouds: stratus, cirrus, cumulus, and nimbus. Here was our bulletin board {cloud people inspired by Abby!}

 

{photo circa 2011.. I've been horrible at photographing this year!}

 

Then we had our kids write a fact about each cloud on notecards. They glued those to blue paper, and on the back they got to make their own miniature cloud people! Cute, cute!

 

 

We have a couple more cloud activities to do on Monday, then we will move on to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and really start getting into weather! Then SPRING BREAK!! :) :) :)