Science: Water Cycle

I didn't plan this, I swear.

Since it is the raining season now,

he saw some dark clouds quickly turned the sky into inky grey

and heavy rain ensued.

Tiger asked, why got rain?

 And as I explained, he started shooting me with more questions

What is cloud?

What is eva-ton? (evaporation)

Where rain will go now?

Aha! My window of opportunity to teach science.

I suck at being a normal mom. Can you tell?

So, I bought this set of thingamajigs from Mothercare (half price + 10%)

and prepared a water cycle demo for him.

Sun printout from our ESP stash

An old water cycle printout from Tweedlewink. 

(The water cycle)

 I placed some cotton balls (clouds) into the perforated container.
As it "rained" (precipitation), water infiltrated into the sponge (land), and
'run off' into the last container.
The blue tray represented the sea.
The sun shined and water heats up.
(Here, I cheated. I told him to close his eyes and I poured warm water into the tray)
Haha, he was impressed!
Because of heat, evaporation happens (I pointed to the vapour from the water)
They condense to form clouds (back to the cotton)
When it becomes verrrry, heavy, it rains, again.
 The end.
Nah, there is no end. It just goes on and on....

          

The next day, he used some unifix cubes (cause I threw away the cotton)

 Making observations.

I wrote the process: Evaporation, condensation, Precipitation.

Tiger read: bla-bla tion, nou-nou tion, porupot-tion.

Yeah, genius.

 On very good days, he may help to clean up.

Do you have a clean up song?

I usually use a modified version of Doc Mcstuffin's song:

Time for your clean up;

time for your clean up....

Tiger hates it when I change lyrics of songs,,hihi.

 

 Here, he explained 'evaporation' to me..

"Sun shine on lake.

heat water.

water go up"

 It became a farm story where all the animals bath together.

His story telling ability has improved alot.

Only in a kid's world, a puny elephant, a hyena, a fox and a goose would race.

In the end, the goose won!