The Water Cycle

Since this is the last day of April and I was telling Alexandra how April showers bring May flowers, I thought we would talk a little more about rain and the water cycle.

Cloud in a Jar

The first activity we did was the cloud in a jar activity that I found at Teach Preschool. Alexandra loved this activity. To set  up the activity you need:

shaving cream

a jar or glass of water  filled about halfway full

shaving cream

food coloring

paper towels

To begin, fill your glass up with water, about halfway full. Then squirt shaving cream on top of the water. This is your cloud. Then, Alexandra squirted the blue food coloring into the cloud. The blue food coloring represents the water droplets that are in a cloud. Once they seep through or get to heavy for the cloud to hold anymore it starts raining blue food coloring into the water. 

We had to use a lot of drops until it would go all the way through. I put a pretty thick cloud on top of the water. You can see on the left of the glass where it rained.

 More and more is seeping through as Alexandra watched intently

Water Cycle Model

Next , we made a model of the water cycle. We talked about it first and then we made a model to represent the water cycle. First Alexandra was rolling out blue fondant to cut out raindrops. I don't always just have fondant laying around but I am making a birthday cake for a friend of a friend's son this week. 

 Cutting out the raindrops (I didn't have a raindrop shaped cutter so we used a small flower cutter) They actually look like snowflakes.

 Now we're ready to put the model together. First I made a glue circle for the sun and Alex sprinkled yellow sprinkles on it. Anytime I'm using sprinkles I use a cookie sheet!

 Then, she added mini marshmallows for the clouds

 Next, I placed dots of glue on the paper and she glued the precipitation under the clouds

Then, we used glue and sprinkles for the bodies of water where the precipitation goes, and then more fondant cutouts for the evaporating water

Below is the finished product

While making the water cycle we watched a few you tube videos about it and we found a funny chipmunk song about the water cycle.