Water lesson plan

Nature School, Jan. 2nd, 2012
Water


Materials:
Letter of the day
One cotton ball for each child
Flat pan or tupperware (doesn’t have to be too big) with a little water in it
Cuttouts from “Drippy” story- raindrop, raindrop with captain hat, sun, tree, mountain
Chart with water/non water columns and cutouts of items

Welcome Song

Today we are going to learn about water! Our letter for the day is W (show paper with upper and lower case W on it). Talk about some other words that start with W or children’s names that start with that letter. Water, wish, wash, whale, whiskers, watermelon, where, etc.

Why is water important?
Why do we need water?- drink, clean, work, energy
Why do animals need water?- drink, habitat, clean
Why do plants need water?- growing, photosynthesis

Song-
There is something we need to live and water is its name-o.
W-A-T-E-R, W-A-T-E-R, W-A-T-E-R, and water is its name-o.

Story- Drippy the raindrop
Once upon a time there was a raindrop named Drippy (picture of drop of water). Drippy was having fun! He was doing his favorite thing in the whole wide world- lying on his back floating in the ocean. He looked up at his good old friend Mr. Sun, who had just come up (hold up picture of sun). Mr. Sun rose higher and higher and Drippy got hotter and hotter!

Just then, Drippy saw a big, dark cloud moving across the sky. “I wish I could go up to that cool looking cloud and cool down a bit!”

All of a sudden, Drippy felt himself rising up into the air! He was evaporating! Can we all saw evaporate together? EVAPORATE!

He landed softly on a huge, fluffy cloud. There were thousands of other drops of water too. One of the drops of water called out to Drippy, “Ahoy there! I’m Salty!” (hold up picture of another drop of water with captain hat on).

“I’m Drippy! Nice to meet you. Where are we headed?”

“We are going right toward those mountains over there and it looks like a storm is a brewing. If things get rough, just abandon ship. Jump right off the cloud and toward the earth” Salty said.

After awhile, things did start getting rough. Drippy got ready to jump. 1-2-3-JUMP! Drippy was raining now! He fell with millions of other raindrops down toward the forest near the mountains.

Drippy landed right on a tree (show picture of tree with roots). He slid down on leaf onto a branch and then down the trunk. Down, down, down he slid down the trunk and into the soil near the tree’s roots. Wow! What an adventure we was having.

When we reached the soil, he found lots of other water drops there too. They were filling up the soil pores. He sunk deeper into the soil and into an underground stream. Then, guess what happened? The underwater stream came out of the ground as a spring!! The stream was now above ground. The stream eventually led him out into the ocean again!

Drippy leaned back, floating on his back and looked up at his good friend Mr. Sun again. “Hello there, Mr. Sun!” What an adventure I’ve had! I’ve been through the water cycle. Can you all say WATER CYCLE? I’m learned so much and seen so much of our beautiful earth. What a wonderful world we live in!”

The end

Hands on Science
-Give each child a cotton ball to hold. Tell them to pretend they are hold a cloud.
-How does it feel- heavy or light, soft or hard
-Tell the kids to place their cotton ball into the container of water. When water evaporates, it travels up into the clouds and it is much colder up in the sky, so the vapor turns back into water and fills up the cloud.
- Ask the children the gently pick up their “cloud” from the pan. Ask how their cloud feels now? Heavy or light? Warm or cold?
- What is happening to the water now? Dripping out of your cloud. It is raining! At some point, the clouds cannot hold anymore water because the water gets so heavy, so the water starts to fall out of the clouds turning to rain!
- The water fall back into the pan, which we can pretend is a stream or the ocean, right back into the water cycle.

Chart- What is water/not water
Cutouts of the following- icicle, cloud, river, snowflake, steam, piano, hair, rock, blanket, mug, fork, human, animals, plant, etc.
Chart with two columns- one that says “Water” and another with “not water”