Water Cycle - Terrarium

To further our earlier lesson on The Water Cycle we again listened to the previously linked song via YouTube.  Then I loaded this interactive game of the white board and we all took turns to answer some of the questions as a whole class activity.

As a different way of viewing The Water Cycle in our classroom I decided to build a terrarium.  I had bought some plants at the school fete held the weekend before and I already had the rest of the equipment at home so there was little outlay. 

The kids LOVED this.  I let them all help put some rocks in the bottom so they had some ownership of this.  It now sits on the windowsill in their classroom and it attracts a group of students here and there as they look to see it working.  I love this, a lesson that stays with them throughout the week.

Water cycle

My year 1 and 2 class are studying water in science. We have been on a water walk around the school to identify where water is being used and how and we have assessed water using the 5 senses. In our latest lesson we looked at the water cycle.

I started by playing the this clip found on YouTube.  In linking the video here it has added the whole playlist, I did NOT play the whole list, just the first clip that ran for 3:16.

The children all really enjoyed this clip and it had the added benefit of allowing the students who are lower level readers to hear terms such as 'precipitation' and understand it. We filled in a blank worksheet which had a water cycle diagram. I asked the students on spelling list one and two to write 'rain' instead of precipitation and 'cloud' instead of condensation so it was suited to all levels in this class. The other students on higher spelling lists wrote the bigger words.

It was a big lesson for them as after we did this we went outside with my watering can which I used to simulate rain and we investigated and compared the effects of rain on different surfaces; sand, dirt and cement. It was fun. I only had one watering can so I told the class I was looking for my best listener at each point to help be the 'rain'. Worked well :)