Activity 1 - Focus activity and goal setting

Materials:

• Brainstorming guidelines, page one in lab notes or blank sheet of paper,

Focus questions:

1. What is rain?
2. Why does it continue to rain year after year after year?
3. What happens to water in puddles?
4. What are clouds made of?
   
5. What makes it rain?
   
6. What is evaporation?
7. What is the water cycle?
8. What are the different forms (phases, states) of water?

Learning outcomes:

1. Students will answer focus questions with their current understanding.

Exploration of student's present knowledge about the water cycle

1. Have students brainstorm or discuss the first five focus questions. If they mention anything related to the last three, then discuss those, if not, wait till later activities.

Activity 2 - Evaporation

Materials:

• Styrofoam plates, orange, purple, and black crayons, water

Focus questions:

1. What happens to water in puddles?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain water will evaporate from a puddle and go into the air.

Exploration

Concept - Evaporation is a part of the water cycle when the water is heated and rises into the sky.

Procedure

1. Ask. What do you know about evaporation?
2. How does evaporation relate to the water cycle?
3. Activity is best done on a dry day. On humid days increase time from an hour to two.
4. Each pair of students makes a puddle of water on their plate.
5. Use a purple crayon to draw around the puddle of water.
6. Tell students to put plates into different areas around the room.
7. Let plates sit for an hour.
8. Tell students to predict what will happen to the water.
9. After an hour have students use an orange crayon to draw around the puddle of water.
10. Groups compare the puddles.
11. Leave plates in the same spot for another hour.
12. Compare first predictions and make new predictions/discussion.
13. Recheck after another hour and draw a black circle around the puddle.
    

Invention

1. Discussion about evaporation
2. Ask. What they learned about evaporation.

Activity 3 - Making Clouds

Materials:

2-Liter plastic pop bottle, warm water

Focus questions:

1. What do you think a cloud is made of?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain clouds are made from water.

Exploration

Concept

Clouds are formed from water vapor.

Procedure

1. Ask. What do you think a cloud is made of?
2. Fill the bottle three-fourths full of very warm water
3. Quickly cap the bottle
4. Gently squeeze and release the bottle
5. Look closely inside the bottle, you should see a cloud
6. Squeeze the bottle again
7. Observe
   
8. To help see the cloud you may want to use a flashlight or dust particles.

Invention

1. Ask. What they learned about how clouds are formed
2. Ask. How the water formed on the outside of the glass.

Activity 4 - Shape of clouds

Materials:

Cotton balls, dryer lint or gray flannel, glue, 11"x18" sheet of tag-board, a pencil, crayons, markers, white paint, paintbrushes, glitter, the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, other fiction and nonfiction books about clouds, a stapler.

Focus questions:

1. What do you think a cloud is made of?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain how shapes of clouds are different depending on different weather conditions.

Exploration

Concept

There are three major types of clouds.

Procedure

1. Ask. What do you think a cloud is made of? water, moisture, fog..
2. Ask. What do you see when you look at the clouds.
3. Do you see any difference in their form?
4. Group discussion about clouds.
5. Use a pencil to divide the tag-board into six sections.
6. The three top sections of the tag-board will be used to simulate the three major types of clouds using the following directions
7. Cirrus clouds are high, white clouds with a feathery appearance. To create this type of cloud, paint white streaks at the very top of your paper and sprinkle glitter on the paint while it is still wet. Ask students what they think the glitter represents(the ice that may be present on those clouds)
8. Cumulus clouds are puffy, white, low clouds with flat bottoms. In the second top box, glue cotton balls of various sizes approximately 1/3 of the way down the paper.
9. Stratus clouds are wide, often gray, and low clouds that can drip snow flurries and drizzle. Glue dryer lint or gray flannel across the top of the third top box covering the length of the box.
10. Discussion on what type of weather each cloud brings.
11. Underneath each cloud picture students will draw pictures of what the weather looks like when these clouds are present and what they do in this type of weather.

Invention

1. Read. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and have students write about what they wish it would rain and draw what their cloud would look like.
2. Have students identify and draw the different cloud forms.
3. Take students outside or have them observe on their own the different types of clouds and when they saw them. Also have them include what kind of weather the clouds were discovered in.

Activity 5 - Condensation

Materials:

Source of water, 2 beakers equal size, ice cubes, stir stick, thermometer, clock with a second hand

Focus questions:

1. What do you think happens to moisture in the air?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain how when water in the air cools it it condenses and collects in drops.

Exploration

Concept

Condensation occurs when water is heated or cooled.

Procedure

1. Ask. What do you think happens to moisture in the air?
2. Ask. What is on the outside of a cold glass of water?
3. Fill each beaker with equal amounts of water.
4. Leave enough room to add ice.
5. Record temperature of water.
6. Predict what will happen when ice is added.
7. Add one ice cube to one of the beakers and stir.
8. Continue to add ice to the one beaker and stir until moisture appears on the outside of the beaker.
9. Record the amount of time required and the temperature of the ice water.
10. Ask. Observation questions such as:
11. Why does moisture appear on one beaker and not on the other?
12. And where did the moisture come from?

Invention

1. Ask. What they learned about condensation and what causes water to form on the outside of the glass from the beginning of the experiment.
2. Ask. Where else they can see condensation.

Activity 6 - Precipitation

Materials:

Hot pot, glass bowl with ice, pie tin,

Focus questions:

1. What do you think a cloud is made of?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain shapes of clouds are different depending on different weather conditions.

Exploration

Concept

Water can be a liquid or a solid and can go back and forth from one form to the other.

Procedure

1. Ask. Explain the different forms of water and give examples.
2. Boil water in a hot pot. Only the teacher will handle the water and the pot. Make sure students are a safe distance away from the boiling water.
3. Gather students at a safe distance to view the hot pot and ice bowl.
4. Ask. What will happen when you hold the pot of ice water over the boiled water.
5. Predict what will happen to the bowl of ice, to the steam, and to the bottom of the bowl.
6. Teacher holds bowl of ice over the steam.
7. Place a pie tin so that the water dripping from the bottom of the bowl will collect in the tin.
8. Class observes and shares what they observe happening.

Invention

1. Discussion on the relationship to activity and rain and clouds
2. Ask. What they learned about the different forms of water and give examples and why this knowledge is important to them.

Activity 7 - The Rain Game

Materials:

Assorted colored construction paper, Rope or hula hoop

Focus questions:

1. How do the small drops of water become rain?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain how small droplets of water bump into one another and form bigger droplets and eventually rain drops..

Exploration

Concept

Rain falls when small droplets of water join together and fall to the ground.

Procedure

1. Ask. What is precipitation?
2. Teacher prepares room or outside area by tapping assorted pieces of construction paper at random on the ground. Each separate color has a match somewhere. Tape as many pieces of paper as there are students
3. Students each stand on a piece of construction paper with their arms outstretched.
4. Students are told that they are pretending to be a small cloud drop being blown about by the wind.
5. Small discussion on evaporation.
6. When teacher says "go" students move from one piece of paper to the other of the same color, keeping their arms outstretched.
7. Each time one student touches another, they grab hands and continue to the color they were originally heading to .
8. If they are going to two different colors then they go to the closest color and that is the new group color.
9. When a drop has five students in it they have formed a raindrop and they should go to the puddle area that is roped off by a rope or a hula hoop.
10. If there are more than five in a group the group must split in half and continue playing.

Invention

1. Ask. How this activity relates to precipitation

Activity 8 - Hot air and cold air

Materials:

Hot and cold water, food coloring, baby food jars, eye droppers, medicine container, paper

Focus questions:

1. How do the small drops of water become rain?

Learning outcomes:

1. Explain how hot and cold water and air move within each other.

Hot water rises in cold and cold water sinks in hot.

Hot air rises in cold and cold air sinks in hot.

Exploration

Concept

Hot air rises and cold air falls.

Procedure

1. Ask. Students to explain differences of hot and cold water other than just the temperature.
2. Each group should have two baby food jars and two medicine container, one of each is filled 3/4 of the way full with hot water and one of cold water.
3. Add five drops of food coloring to one of the medicine containers with cold water.
4. Add five drops of food coloring to the other warm water medicine container.
5. Use the eye dropper to drop drops of the colored hot and cold water into the baby food jars of hot and cold water.
6. Observe and ask students how hot and cold water differ and how particles move through each one.

Invention

1. Ask. How they think this information relates to weather.
2. Ask. How this relates to their lives outside of school.