Easy Water Cycle Experiment
This water cycle experiment is great for teaching kids how water gets from the lakes and rivers, into the clouds, and back into the lakes and rivers.
We covered evaporation, condensation, and precipitation with our 6-year-olds with this experiment.
They loved drawing their own landscapes on their Ziploc bags! I also got to see two very different drawing skill-sets and two very different interpretations of what should (and shouldn't) be on a hill. Having my kids explain their ecosystem was one of the best parts. (One kid insisted that hills only had grass - not trees, because the hills at the park near our house have no trees.)
Water Cycle Demonstration
All water on earth goes through the water cycle, as different times falling down as rain, getting absorbed into the ground as groundwater or falling into lakes and rivers, and evaporating into the air to form clouds again.
This simple water cycle STEM activity will help preschool and elementary kids see the water cycle on a small scale. They can draw their own ecosystems and watch as the water evaporates, condenses into tiny clouds, and then falls again as rain.
You only need a few materials to make this water cycle experiment work.
Materials
- Ziploc bag
- permanent marker
- water
- tape
- blue food coloring (optional)
- hair dryer (optional)
How to Make your own Water Cycle Experiment
This is a super simple activity and requires only a few minutes to set up. This is best done on a sunny day, and it will take the better part of a day (or more days) to observe the whole water cycle.
- Draw a mountain on one side of the bag. Add some trees and grass. At the top of the bag, draw a sun and some clouds.
- Add some water to your Ziploc bag. About 2 tablespoons will do. Optional: add 2 drops of blue food coloring.
- Seal the bag to trap some air inside. You don't need a lot of air in your Ziploc bag, but you don't want the sides sticking together either.
- Tape the bag to a window that gets a fair bit of sun. (Packing tape works best.)
- Allow the sun to heat up the water over time. If you want to speed up the process, you can use a hair dryer.
We made our little mountain ecosystems and taped our bags to a window on a fairly sunny day.
We saw some condensation within a few hours. But what was really cool was when we got enough sunlight and heat to evaporate enough water that it started to rain inside our Ziploc bags!
It did take a few days to see rain. You need quite a bit of sunlight and heat to get to that step. With a really sunny day, however, you can observe the evaporation, condensation, and precipitation stages!
Once our bags got warm enough, we saw tiny droplets of rain form near the top of the Ziploc and then drip down the mountain.
Rebecca is a chaplain at a girls’ school, a mom to boys, and a crafter of all things. She crochets in every free moment she has, and she spends much of her time gluing cotton balls to toilet paper rolls and mopping up glitter.
