Water Cycle

Explanations:

• The sun heats up the water in seas, lakes, rivers and snow on mountain tops.
• The water turns into water vapour, a gas which we cant see, and rises up into the sky.
•   Up in the sky, its cooler and the vapour turns back into water droplets.
• The water droplets bump into eachother and join together to make clouds.
• As more water is added, the droplets get bigger and heavier and fall to the ground as rain.
•   The rain falls down to the ground where it flows back into seas, lakes and rivers.

Stage 1: Evaporation

In this stage , the sun starts to evaporate the water in the water bodies, like oceans, seas, lakes, ponds and rivers. This water is in the liquid stage in the water bodies, but changes in weather, and heating due to the Sun converts it into gaseous form. Slowly, these vapours of water start rising up to the sky. Transpiration, which is water escaping from plants due to the Suns heat, also contributes to some extent, to the process of evaporation.

Stage 2: Condensation

It is in this stage the cloud formation occurs.

The water in the form of the vapours rising, cools down at a certain heights and condenses to form clouds.

Stage 3: Precipitation

The water keeps condensing to form clouds, but when there is too much accumulation or collection of water in these clouds, the clouds become heavy. This means the air can no longer hold this much mount of water, and the water starts to fall back, mostly in the form of rain.

Stage 4: Collection

This water falling down in the form of rain or snow, gets collected in different water bodies. When it falls on the ground, it gets stored under the ground, and is called ‘ground water’. The, again evaporation starts due to the Sun’s heat and the cycle happens again.

The water cycle is the process by which water circulates from the Earth to the atmosphere (air) and back again. When the Sun heats water at the Earth’s surface, some of it evaporates. This means that liquid water turns into water vapour (gas). The water vapour rises. As it does so, it cools and turns back into tiny droplets of liquid water. The droplets group together to form clouds. Eventually, the water falls back to Earth as rain (liquid), hail (solid) or snow (solid), and cycle begins again.

Key Words:

Evaporation:

Heat from the Sun causes water on Earth (in oceans, lakes etc) to evaporate (turn from liquid into gas) and rise into the sky. This water vapor collects in the sky in the form of clouds.

Condensation: As water vapor in the clouds cools down it becomes water again, this process is called condensation.

Precipitation: Water falls from the sky in the form of rain, snow, hail, or sleet, this process is called precipitation.

Collection:

Oceans and lakes collect water that has fallen. Water evaporates into the sky again and the cycle continues.

There are six important processes that make up the water cycle.

1.     Condensation - the opposite of evaporation. Condensation occurs when a gas is changed into a liquid.

2.    Infiltration - Infiltration is an important process where rain water soaks into the ground, through the soil and underlying rock layers.

3.    Runoff - Much of the water that returns to Earth as precipitation runs off the surface of the land, and flows down hill into streams, rivers, ponds and lakes.

4.    Evaporation - the process where a liquid, in this case water, changes from its liquid state to a gaseous state.

5.    Precipitation - When the temperature and atmospheric pressure are right, the small droplets of water in clouds form larger droplets and precipitation occurs. The raindrops fall to Earth. 

6.    Transpiration - As plants absorb water from the soil, the water moves from the roots through the stems to the leaves. Once the water reaches the leaves, some of it evaporates from the leaves, adding to the amount of water vapor in the air. This process of evaporation through plant leaves is called transpiration.

Here are some images I found on the internet aimed at children. They all show illustrations rather

than actual photos. This makes it more simple and easy to understand for children as the sea, sky, 

and land are easy to distinguish between. They also all have arrows, often red, to emphasise whats 

happening (evaporation, condensation, precipitation) and the direction its going in. This suggests 

that a visual guide is more effective than text. On all the images there is little text. This makes it less 

confusing for the learner.

Here are two examples that would not be suitable for children at the Eco Farm. As you can see they are much more complex, there is a lot more text, and the illustrations are a lot more detailed. This would confuse the children and they wouldn't learn as much.