WonderWorks: The water cycle

A guest presenter brings experiments, books and craft projects!

Today's Topic: The Water Cycle
Supplies:
clear container (like a quart mason jar)
shaving cream
liquid food coloring
coffee filters
washable markers
spray bottle with water
construction paper clouds
cotton balls
rainbow-colored strips of paper
glue sticks

Books:
Cloudette / Lichtenheld, Tom
Water can be... / Salas, Laura Purdie

 What Kids Do: First, Anne Moser (of the UW Water Library) read these two books, then she asked the kids to help decide whether some pictures she gave them were of water or "not water."

 Most were easy (a duck? the ocean?), but some of them (like rainbow) were a bit less clear-cut.

 She then had the kids help her sing the Itsy-Bitsy spider song because, hey, that's the water cycle!

I then did a brief demonstration of the This is My Weather app by urbn pockets

 (which the kids seemed to enjoy and liked playing on their own.)

Anne had set up three interactive stations. One had coffee filters, markers and spray bottles of water:

Another had kids making clouds and rainbows:

The third station had a jar of water onto which she sprayed a "cloud" of shaving cream, then had the kids add food coloring on top and watch for the food coloring to filter through.

 In the morning class, we learned that this experiment doesn't work as well with gel food coloring (hooray for learning things through experimentation!).

 But in the afternoon class, we used regular food coloring and it worked like a charm!

Thanks for a great class Anne! We always enjoy your visits to our library!