Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Water Cycle!



Last Friday' s basket theme was Weather. Josh is pretty in tuned with what weather entails so I wanted to go a bit deeper without making it too complicated...he is still 3. So anyway, we did a really fun lesson about the water cycle. (Along with other weather related activities!)

First, I printed a picture of the water cycle without labels, I can not "refind" my source but they are readily available. We then labeled the picture using simple straightforward terms; sun, rain, ground, puddle, cloud, and evaporate.

Next we did a really great "experiment". About halfway down this page.
All you do is talk about how a cloud is similar to a cotton ball, get the cotton wet and let the rain pour off of it. I could not believe how such a simple activity really drove the point home. He really gets it!

To end the lesson we created water cycle bracelets. Click on the link here! This was a lot of fun and he still remembers each part of the water cycle just by looking at his new bracelet!

I am really thrilled with how the basket Fridays are going! We have started just doing them in my bed. So much more room than the couch and just a bit more cozy! What a great way to end our week!

Shannon



2 comments:

Tracy said...

What great ideas! Little Man has had a lot of questions lately, especially about the weather. These activities will be great food for his curiousity!

Thanks for sharing:)

Shannon said...

Great! Glad to help! We had a ton of fun with the water cycle stuff! We are now keeping track of the weather every morning this month. He is loving this! We just put up a bunch of cards with each weather type in a vertical row and he puts in a "marker" every morning in the corresponding horizontal row. (Great intro to graphing!)