Briefing
Water really gets around. Sometimes it's up in the clouds, sometimes it falls down as rain, sometimes it flows in rivers, and sometimes it ends up in your drinking glass. But it never appears out of thin air, and it never really disappears. It just changes from one form to the next. In this Smart Art, you'll show how that happens!
Activity
You'll need:
Go With The Flow Start Images
What to Do:
In this Smart Art, you'll help complete an illustrated story about the changes that water goes through.
Start by clicking on "Go With The Flow Start Images," above, and printing them. Four pages will print.
Each kid doing the activity should choose ONE of these pages to start with. (Make more copies if you need to. It's okay if some kids start with identical pictures.)
Now look at your page. It should look kind of like a newspaper comic strip -- except that most of the panels are blank! However, you'll notice that the first panel has been drawn in. It's a picture of water in some form.
What would happen to the water after this? Where would it end up next? Draw that in the very next panel.
When you're done, trade pictures with another kid, or pass your picture to the kid on your left.
Now look at your new picture. This time, there should be TWO panels drawn in. What happens after this? Draw where the water goes next in the next panel, and then pass your picture to someone else.
Keep passing the pictures around, drawing in one panel at a time. When you're finished, you should have several completed picture-stories.
To do this right, you'll want to know about the water cycle. Look in the More Information section if you have any questions.
Debriefing
There's no limit to the number of different stories your team may have come up with. Try and find two stories that started from the same drawing. Did they follow the same pattern? Were both equally believable?
If you've got your Case Journal, go ahead and answer the questions in it now!
More Info
There are all kinds of ways that water moves around and changes its form. Here are some of them:
Evaporation: When lakes, rivers, and oceans get heated up, the water rises off the surface as vapor and into the air.
Condensation: If water vapor gets high enough in the Earth's atmosphere, it can clump together and form clouds.
Precipitation: Also known as rain, snow, sleet, or hail! That's when water falls from the clouds in liquid or solid form.
Collection: There are all kinds of places where water can be stored for a long time: in lakes, rivers, oceans, and other bodies of water; in the snow on mountaintops, in the ice of icebergs and glaciers, or in the ground, where it's known as groundwater. Eventually, the water can escape these places by evaporating, melting, or trickling out to another place.
Animals and Plants drink water (or absorb it through their roots). Later on it comes out, either through sweat, urine, or transpiration (something plants do that?s like sweating through their leaves).
Water can also flow from one place to the next. For example, most rivers flow into oceans. Water can melt off the top of a mountain and flow into a lake. Groundwater can trickle out of the ground and into a body of water.
And don't forget irrigation: man-made systems of sewers, water pipes, and plumbing. That's how water gets into your house, school, or a public fountain. Usually the water comes from a lake, river, or man-made body of water called a reservoir.
If you want to learn more about the water cycle, check out these Web sites:
KidZone?s Water Cycle Page
http://www.kidzone.ws/water/
The EPA's Water Cycle Page
http://www.epa.gov/region07/kids/wtrcycle.htm
"Follow a Drip through the Water Cycle" (from the U.S. Geological Survey)
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/followdrip.html
"Water: A Never Ending Story"
http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/pilot/water_cycle/