Teach the water cycle in fun ways. Here are 8 fast and free water cycle resources and activities for the primary grades. You’ll find videos, diagram resources and how to make rain in a jar. These are all active or hands-on ways to make the water cycle real to your first grade and second grade students. Earth science made easy!
Creative Water Cycles
1. Water Cycle Diagram for Kids – Create a diagram of the cycle with paper, glitter, crayons and cotton balls. Students draw and label the water cycle to show how they understand it.
2. Water Cycle Bracelet – You’ll love that this tip includes a song and an alternative water diagram idea. This water cycle bracelet shows how the cycle repeats. Includes a free printable to accompany the bracelet.
Water Cycle Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgpwldu8QU
3. Water Cycle Boogie – This fun 3 min. boogie will have your students bouncing as they learn what each step of the water cycle is called with illustrations to match.
4. Water Cycle Sing Song – This familiar “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” tune may just be the ticket to help your students recall each step of the water cycle. It’s just a minute long which may make it the easiest to sing.
5. Super Short Song – This chant-sounding song is only about 40 seconds long. It would make a great anchor chart or song to sing as you review your own water cycle diagrams in the classroom.
6. Frozen Ice Powers – What kid wouldn’t want to explore the properties of water. Students may better understand evaporation and condensation when they see how water can do many things! Cash in on the Frozen movie mania with these fun ideas.
Making the Water Cycle
7. Making Rain in a Pop Bottle – Create an easy viewing rain-creating pop bottle. This experiment can also be done in a jar. Students can watch as water droplets and ice crystals collect in a cloud – get too heavy to float on air and fall to the Earth as rain.
8. Printable Labels – Have students cut and glue a sun, raindrops and labels to make a large poster or color and label a 8.5×11 free printable page one.
What a fun set of resources and activities for teaching the water cycle! I hope you found these videos, printables and lesson plan ideas helpful.
Thanks to all of the talented teachers featured in this collection – your ideas will save so much time for many teachers! Feel free to grab the “I’m a Featured Teach Junkie” blog button as your creations are definitely worth the shout out.
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Leslie {aka the original Teach Junkie} loves learning new things to make teaching easier and more effective. She enjoys featuring creative classroom fun when she's not designing teacher shirts, making kindergarten lesson plans or planning her family's next trip to Disney World.