We finally got around to our Water Cycle model!

A 5th grade teacher on our campus came up with this brilliant idea to use a humidifier to represent evaporation in the water cycle. He made a mural-ish kind of model on his file cabinet and then used a clear container for the "water vapor" to condense into "clouds"....and I loved it so much we did our own version.

Here's what happened in our model:

  You can see our humidifier sitting on the stool. Since there was water changing from a liquid to a gas at THAT POINT one of my little ladies wanted to make a "costume" for our humidifier and turn it into a lake. We wrapped it in blue butcher paper and while we were working on something else she added waves and a sailboat. (ha!) Too funny.  So our water vapor goes up into the air and into (as much as possible) that clear container that is hanging off the ledge of my bookshelf. (oh! perhaps i should mention that this is a full sized bookshelf in my classroom. There are 8 crates that sit on this shelf so it's a pretty good size model. And hanging from the ceiling above it is a huge sun that powers the whole water cycle process.)

Back to the clear container and the water droplets accumulating into a cloud...

(a better picture of that is below)

So, inside that clear container I set a cookie sheet on the shelf. 

The cookie sheet and the inside of the container are actually having a lot of condensation accumulating. So I can slip the cookie sheet out and show them the condensation that has formed and show them what happens when a cloud is forming. Imagine how they react when water droplets start to drip down from that bucket like ACTUAL precipitation! They think it's the coolest thing ever. So we added to our mural different types of precipitation (just rain and snow, but they can explain that sleet and hail are also included). We labeled each phase of the process and then they explained what was happening there on index cards, which we also added to the mural. I just think this is GENIUS.

I'm so glad this 5th grade teacher shared his idea with me and that my people got a chance to really see how this works. 

I'm thinking we've got a good understanding of the water cycle...hallelujah!

oh, i found this!

this is the before pic...