Teachers and homeschooling parents can use this easy craft project to review the journey of water through the water cycle. This is adapted from a workshop taught by the Cape Cod Groundwater Guardian Team.
Water Cycle Bracelet or Necklace
Each bracelet requires 12” of craft lacing or string and six plastic pony beads in the following colors: light blue, green, dark blue, yellow, clear, and white.
- Hand out a piece of string to each student.
- Give each student a light blue bead and tell them to place it on the string. This bead represents precipitation – the rain (snow or sleet) that falls to the ground.
- Hand out a dark blue bead that represents the oceans, lakes, ponds, and streams where some of the rainwater flows. When water falls to the ground, some of it runs off directly into streams and rivers and some of it percolates down into the soil to become groundwater. Students should slide the dark blue bead next to the light blue bead.
- Add a green bead for the plants, trees, and grasses that uses the water. Explain transpiration, the process through which excess water is released from plants through tiny openings called stomata, as water vapor. This bead goes next to the dark blue bead.
- Slide on a yellow bead (next to the green bead) to represent the sun that provides the energy needed for water to change from a liquid to gaseous state so transpiration and evaporation can occur.
- Next add a clear bead to represent evaporation. Evaporation takes place from open surface areas of water. When water is heated by the sun it changes from a liquid to a gas, water vapor, and rises into the air. Water evaporates faster the higher the temperature and the larger the surface area of the water body.
- Finally, add the white bead to represent the way the water vapor forms into clouds. Water vapor condenses, or comes together into tiny droplets that attach to specks of dirt or dust that then forms clouds.
- Tie the bracelet with a knot. Discuss how the water cycle is continuously occurring, represented by circle of the bracelet. The water on the earth today is the same water that existed billions of years ago!
Water Cycle Review Activity With Storytelling
Seat the students in a circle. If doing this activity with an entire class, students can remain at their seats. Show the students a blue bead and tell them that it represents a raindrop. They will pass the bead around the group, with each person who holds the bead/raindrop telling part of the story of the raindrop’s travels around the globe, in and out of plants, animals, clouds, glaciers, etc. Students need only talk for 30 seconds or so.
Use the bracelet to review (or introduce) the water cycle. The different colors represent the endless journey of water and provide a convenient reminder to students.
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