Wonderful water: activities
Key Words
Liquid, transparent, water vapour, atom, molecule, hydrogen, oxygen, evaporate, freshwater, saline, ocean, sea, river, stream, reservoir, canal, lake, pond, onomatopoeia, water cycle, current, dissolve, cells, dehydrate, beverage, purification, filter, mineral, spring, carbonated.
Activities
Here are a set of activities to support the Online Field Trip about water. The intention is to provide a range of activities that span the curriculum and motivate children to want to
learn about water – why it is so essential to all living things and so vital to our everyday lives. After the introduction, the activities are listed in a structured order to progress children through the topic and finish with a variety of extension ideas. Feel free to select the activities that suit the needs of your class.
Introducing Water
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Start by giving each child a cup of water. Ask them to look, smell and taste it. Invite the children to describe the water. Discuss the fact that water is a tasteless, colourless, odourless, transparent liquid.
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Invite comments from the children about why they think water is important. Discuss the fact that all living things need water to survive. We also use water for many other different things.
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Ask the children to comment on how water can change its form. Discuss the fact that water is a liquid but will freeze at 0°c to form a solid (ice) and boil at 100°c to form a gas (water vapour/steam).
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Tell the children that water is a molecule made up of two hydrogen gas atoms and one oxygen gas atom, which is why it is sometimes referred to a H2O. When these three atoms come together, they form a strong bond called a water molecule and that bond can last for billions of years.
Water on Earth
- Explain that water covers approximately 70% of the Earth’s surface, which makes it the most common substance we have. Approximately 97% of that water is saline (salty) and only 3% of it is freshwater.
- Find out how much children know about water on Earth by sharing the picture and fact cards. Ask the children to note where salt water and freshwater are found and also to spot which bodies of water are natural and which are man-made.
Consider the following information:
1. Oceans - Very large bodies of salt water that cover two thirds of the earth’s surface. We have five oceans around theworld. They are called Pacific ocean, Atlantic ocean, Indian ocean, Southern ocean and Arctic ocean.
2. Seas - Smaller bodies of salt water than oceans and partly or fully enclosed by land. We have over fifty seas around the world. The largest are the Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the South China Sea, the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
3. Rivers - Large natural streams of water that flow to the sea, a lake or another river. Rivers contain freshwater and flow in a channel. The bottom of the channel is called the ‘bed’ and the sides are the ‘banks’. Rivers have a current that keep them moving.
4. Streams - Small, narrow rivers of freshwater that have a current.
5. Lakes - (Or Lochs in Ireland and Scotland) Large areas of deep water surrounded by land. They can be natural or man-made. Most lakes contain freshwater but without a stream draining water away from the lake, it can become salty. Lakes must have a continual source of new water or they will eventually dry up. Lakes may sometimes have currents.
6. Ponds - Small areas of still, freshwater, different from lakes because they are not so deep. They can be natural or man-made. They may be fed by a small stream and tend to have more plant life than lakes.
7. Reservoirs - Artificial, man-made lakes formed by building a dam across a river. They fill up with water when it rains and the water can then be stored to use later as a water supply.
8. Canals - Long man-made channels of water, built to allow the passage of boats or ships or to carry water for irrigation. Sometimes called artificial waterways. Canals often connect existing lakes, rivers, seas and oceans.
• After you have shared and discussed the information on the eating water cards, invite the children to think of other bodies of water that may not have been included. They may think of ‘lagoon’, ‘brook’, ‘marsh’, ‘harbour’, ‘creek’ or ‘swamp’. Encourage the children to investigate any suggestions and share with the class anything they find out.
The Water Cycle
- Talk to the children about how water is constantly recycled in a process called ‘the water cycle’. The process involves heat from the sun causing water to evaporate from all the wet surfaces of the Earth. Water vapour rises to form clouds that then fall as rain.
- With the children, look at the information sheet for the water cycle. Each stage of the water cycle is explained and fits together to form a continuous circle, but the stages have been mixed up. Ask the children to colour the diagrams, cut out each section, and fit the circle back together in the correct order.
The correct order of the cycle is as follows:
1. Heat from the sun causes water to evaporate from the Earth’s wet surfaces.
2. The water vapour rises into the air, cools and condenses to form tiny water droplets.
3. Water droplets gather together to form clouds.
4. The clouds are carried away by currents of air until they meet cool air.
5. The cool air causes the water droplets to form larger drops, which fall as rain, sleet or snow.
6. The water soaks into the ground and most of it flows downhill back into the oceans and seas.
- Children may ask why rain isn’t salty. This is because, when water is evaporated from oceans and seas, it is only water vapour that rises in to the air, the salt does not. This is why seas and oceans become saltier as time passes. You can show the children how this works by dissolving some salt in a glass of water. See how many teaspoons of salt you can add to the water until it will no longer dissolve. If you then leave the glass of water in a warm place, the water will evaporate and leave the salt behind.
Water and Living Things
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Explain to the children that water is not just on the Earth’s surface, but also inside living things, including the human body, animals and plants. The human body is roughly 50-70% water and we lose approximately three litres of our water every day through urine or sweat, or simply by breathing it out as water vapour. It is important that we drink water to replace what we lose, otherwise our bodies will shut down.
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Share the poem together: I’m Made of Water. Copies are available to download.
I’m Made of Water
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Invite the children to pick out some of the parts of the poem that tell us what water does to keep our bodies healthy. What do the children think would happen if we stopped drinking water? See if anyone knows how long we could survive without it (between 4 and 7 days).
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The children will know that they drink when they are thirsty but ask what they think might make their bodies thirstier than normal. Salty food, exercise, hotter temperatures and illness will often all cause our bodies to require more water.
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Invite comments as to why it is better to drink water than other drinks such as cordials or fizzy drinks. Although water has no calories or nutrients and does not contain any sugar or additives it is vital to every cell of our bodies.
Eating Water
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Explain to the children that, although 80% of our water intake comes from drinking water and other liquids, 20% comes from the food we eat. All food contains water, even dry foods such as cereals. Many common foods have a very high water content – particularly fruits and vegetables.
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Ask the children to bring in empty packets and food labels from home that list water as an ingredient. Share findings amongst the class and ask the children to create food choices that could help to keep them hydrated. Some examples of food containing water are: ham, hard and soft cheese, custard, yoghurt, tinned spaghetti hoops, baked beans and fruit juice. Use the fruit and vegetable water content cards to play a Top Trumps style game. Play in groups of two. Deal out the cards equally. Each child should look at their top card and choose to call out either the item’s weight, the weight of the water, or the water content percentage (usually the highest value). The other player then looks at their top card to see if their item is a higher value for the category chosen. If it is, they win the card and take the next turn. If the value is lower or the same, they lose their card to the other player, who continues their turn. The player with the most cards wins.
- Talk to the children about how water has been the inspiration for many artists and writers. It takes many forms and can look beautiful in a natural setting, because of this, it has inspired many artists and writers.
- The famous French painter Claude Monet created a water garden at his home in Giverny, and painted 250 paintings of it. Search online or use a reference book to view the famous painting ‘Water-Lily Pond’ by Monet. He described these paintings as “producing the effect of an endless whole, of a watery surface with no horizon and no shore”. Discuss the different colours that have been used to create the water and how Monet has used light and shade to create the impression of reflection.
- Using pastels, chalks or crayons, as the children to create their own version of Monet’s famous painting.
- During a whole-class brainstorm, ask the children to suggest words to describe water and make a list. Water is wonderfully descriptive and is a lovely topic for creative writing. Use the vocabulary list that the children have made as a class, plus the word bank of descriptive words provided and ask the children to complete a short piece of descriptive writing, or a poem, to describe Monet’s painting. Share the finished work with the class.
- Whilst completing their creative writing, encourage the children to spot examples of an ‘onomatopoeia’ (words that imitate the sound they make). For example, ‘splash’ and ‘plop’ (extension activity for 9-11 year olds).
Tap Water
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Ask the children if they have ever thought about the journey water has made before it comes out of our taps. Explain that water has to be well purified in a water treatment works before it reaches our homes.
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Use the tap water timeline [TapWaterTimeline_7-11_Water] to explain the purification process.
- Ask the children to imagine they are a droplet of water about to be pumped out of the river to be purified and taken to someone’s home, school or business. They should write a fun description of what happens to them on their journey from the river and where they eventually end up. In someone’s bath? Or in the washing machine perhaps?
- Discuss the fact that, in Britain, we are lucky to have tap water that is clean and safe to drink. In other countries this is not the case. Have the children travelled to any countries where they have not been able to drink the tap water? Ask the children to think of the difficulties they could encounter if their tap water was not safe to drink. Consider brushing teeth and washing food.
- Tell the children that, despite our tap water in Britain being perfectly safe to drink, bottled water has become very popular. It is often sold as ‘mineral water’ or ‘spring water’ and in Britain, we use three billion litres of bottled water every year.
- Look at some examples of bottled water and ask the children to examine the wording on the packaging. If the label says ‘mineral water’ or ‘spring water’, the water has come from an underground source, where it is bottled and therefore safe to drink without any treatment. Some bottled water has had carbon dioxide added to it, making it ‘sparkling water’.
- Ask the children if they or their family purchase bottled water. Ask for their reasons for doing this. What do the children think are the main reasons that bottled water has become so popular? Does bottled water seem more pure or clean? Is it the idea that it has added minerals and so is better for our health? Is it the convenience of having a bottle to carry?
- Encourage the children to design a label for their own new brand of bottled water. Discuss what colours and images should be used on the bottle to make it attractive and suitable. Return to the descriptive words in the word bank for inspiration with good marketing language for water.
