The Water Cycle

Bubbles Boats and Floats with Mother Goose Time

Day 16 The Water Cycle

We jumped in the curriculum to week 4: Wonderful Water.

When I have trays set out with materials on them, the boys are always too curious and can't wait to find out what its about. So, while we were waiting for their Dad to finish up some phone calls, we experimented.

The Teacher Guide and Little Goose books have great activities for this topic. I sort of combined them. In Little Goose, there are Tray Play ideas, or invitations to play and it suggested to use tweezers to pick up and drop cotton balls (or clouds) in a ice cube tray. I added a few other elements to make a complete water cycle activity.

The boys used eyedroppers (and later basters because the droppers weren't enough water) to suck up the water... the evaporation stage.

Cotton balls were placed in the tray as they gathered more water ... the condensation stage.

When a cotton ball was wet enough in the tray, it was was squeezed to release the water ... the precipitation stage.
The bowl represented the collection stage of the water or where the rain/precipitation fell... into the lake, river, ocean, pond etc.

We experimented with what would happen if the water was taken out of the cycle, or the clouds. The boys found out that it changed everything and wasn't much of a cycle. Take one thing out and everything else gets messed up. The earth needs water, people need water and plants & animals too.
What a great to explore the Earth Sciences and observe cause & effect of the water cycle.

After the boys were done exploring the water cycle, the activity turned into bees aandhoney. They were pretending to suck up the nectar from a flower and spit it into the cells of the beehive to make honey. I was impressed at the cross-connection of the activity that they came up with on their own. A remembrance of the last unit with Bees & Butterflies. How cool when they recall things and alter an activity on their own to make those connections.

A Day Out @ the SD Zoo

Today we took a trip to the San Diego Zoo. It wasn't exactly a field trip, but we did make some connections from our Mother Goose Time lessons this month.

I never there was a carnivorous plant garden at the zoo. There was a worker with a booth set up to talk about them a little bit since they were blooming. I also didn't know that the Venus Flytrap is such a small plant. They only sit up to 6 inches off the ground in this photo. It takes about 10 days for one trap to digest its meal too. The Venus Flytrap is also a spring/summer plant and goes dormant in the winter.

This pitcher plant is rather compared to ones that grow in the rainforest; this one was about 5 inches tall (its the pinkish ring in the center of the photo below). These cups/pitchers can grow to about the size of a football in the rainforest and can catch birds.

Off to the side of this little garden was a bunny. He was rather content sitting in there and we talked about how rabbits visit all sorts of gardens, not just vegetable gardens.

We also found lots of bees working among the flowers strewn along pathways. They were transferring pollen from flower to flower.

We didn't specifically have a school day today, but making the connections is valuable too. We had fun playing with each other and observing other life forms on our wondrous planet. Life is amazing.

An InLinkz Link-up

Garden Animal Scavenger Hunt

I asked Mr A what he knew about bees. His answer: Bees move pollind from flowers to help make new ones. Right on, little buddy. Yes, he calls it pollind no matter how many times I try to correct him.

We started our day off with a walk first thing in the morning. It was a garden animal scavenger hunt. Mr A just wanted to go to the spot where we saw a rabbit the other day. Along the way there, we spotted a few bees and tons of snails. The boys lined up the snails to make a snail family. Then the line turned into a pile because they kept finding so many. We observed the different patterns on the snail shells and decided there are no two that are alike. I mentioned that animals that you can find in a garden, also live in other places too. They can be found all over and visit a garden to find food sometimes. (Most of the time, I don't think the boys are paying attention... but I talk anyways. Maybe something will stick.)

We never did find the rabbit from the other day, but we did spot some pretty blackbirds with red on their wings in the reeds. We followed several different walking trails around our dried lake bed to see where they would lead. Mr A loves being the leader and says These trails are wonderful. We passed a large embankment with bees working hard. I talked about how bees are constantly moving from flower to flower and they don't stay in one place too long... pollinating and drinking.

After our walk, we rested while watching the Magic School Episode: Honeybees. We watched how bees drink nectar from the flowers to make honey back in their hive. The honeycomb has hexagon shaped compartments to hold the nectar and honey. The bees have a proboscis to suck the nectar from flowers and also use it to stir the nectar inside the honeycomb. Some bees fan the nectar while its being stirred to thicken it into honey.
Afterwards, we pretended to pollinate the flowers. I made some simple flowers from construction paper and cute toilet paper into small squares. Mr A says Bees spread pollind and hummingbirds and the wind blows it around. So, Mr A pretended to be a hummingbird for a little while and moved the pollen squares from flower to flower a few times. Then, I pulled out the hair dryer and the boys used it to pretend to be the wind. There was pollen everywhere.

 Mr A built his own honeycomb and used it for a flower plate... whatever that is.

Mother Goose Time provided us with these photos of poppy fields and cornmeal. The boys pretended to be bees and pollinate the flowers. I clipped their cotton ball to a clothespin so they could get a better grip. They swirled it around in the cornmeal for quite some time. When Mr A picked his up, he was disappointed that there was such a small amount on the cotton ball. I tried to explain that a bee can't carry much pollen on his feet or belly either. That's why its such hard work. It takes a long time.