Measuring Water and Rivers, Lakes, Oceans, Puddles

The Sun and the water of the Oceans is where most of the action for weather impact originates, one could say. 

We started our circle time watching and singing this (click on the image above for a video, or on the words for link to sheet music):

 "Give," said the little stream,
"Give, oh! give, give, oh! give."
"Give," said the little stream,
 As it hurried down the hill;
"I'm small, I know, but wherever I go
The fields grow greener still."

"'Water depositories' are places where water collects."  I showed them pictures of the water cycle, and  of rivers, lakes and oceans. Then I asked: What are some of the places we can collect water?"

The Montessori Bin Exchange provided laminated cards with the puctures and sizes of common measurments. To make it funner, I prepared clean empty containers from the kitchen on the most popular sizes: gallon, a liter, a pint, a cup, a table spoon, a tea spoon, and a mililliter to match the cards. I wrote in permanent marker the names on the bottles.

We then got a big empty container outside, and had the kids pick their "depository" to then carry the water to our "big depository," an emty plastic bin.  Blue Berries picked the biggest, the gallon size, and merrily went on to fill it with water. This was a great idea, she thought, until she had to haul it all the way outside ;) it gave her a good sense of how much smaller a pint is in comparison to a gallon.

Water depositories

Sweet boy loved pouring the water from one container to the other. Baby had losts of fun watching.

TIP: call each container by its name, not just "this one or that one" but "the cup," the "gallon" the litter.

Gotta love that smile! the joy learning brings to children is inspiring! 

How many "cups" in a "sixty gallon" bin?

I had Pumma Tiger practice her math and handwriting by asking her just about how much water covers the earth, do you think?  She suggested we look it up online.

out 70 % of the surface of the Earth is covered in water, approximately 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 (three hundred, twenty six million trillion).  We practiced our hundreds, millions (seven to nine digits) and trillions (twelve digits). AbWe got the idea that it is a LOT of it from writing down all those zeros.

Seven tenths of the surface of the earth is H20, or water.  We graphed seven tenths montessori style, two columns, five rows each (to make ten spaces).  She counted and colored them in.

You can't really see it, but the big drop of water says H2O for two atoms of Hydrogen and one of Oxigen to make one water molecule.  These words are big, but I use them to explain thngs, and they totally get it. It all started with our YouTube Astronomy playlist where

This was a fun day.

Our scripture study for the day was the following:

"But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."  John 4:14