Water Cycle Puzzle

What are clouds? Why does it rain? Where do the puddles go? To make understanding the water cycle easier, I designed a puzzle for my son to complete.

First, though, we learned a little from some amazing books.

Evaporation and condensation are tough to explain to a 6 year old. To help him “see” evaporation, we filled a transparent glass half full of water and I cut a strip from the sticky part of a post-it note to mark where the water line was. We’ll be observing it all week to see how much water evaporates.

UPDATE: After one week, 1 1/2 centimeters of water had evaporated from our glass.

To illustrate condensation, I filled a glass mason jar two-thirds full with warm water and screwed the lid on. It didn’t take long before the jar’s sides above the water line steamed over and beads of condensation formed.

Afterwards, I gave my son the puzzle and asked him to put the pieces and arrows in the right order. When my son wasn’t sure, I told him to turn the pictures over and read the back. 

Before long, he had all the pieces in place. We turned the oval pictures over to double check. He was SO excited to get it right!

To make your own Water Cycle Puzzle, you need:

1 large, empty cereal box

2 pieces of sticker paper

Water Cycle Puzzle template (download a 2-page PDF here)

An exacto knife

Glue

Directions:

Cut the cereal box and save the two largest rectangles; recycle the rest. Print both pages of the Water Cycle Puzzle PDF onto sticker paper. Peel off the backing from the first page (the one with the large pictures). Adhere this (centering it) to the plain brown side of one of the cereal box rectangles. Cut off any excess. Carefully use an exacto knife to cut out the ovals and circles (put a cutting board or cardboard underneath to protect your work surface).

Use scissors to cut out the ovals and circles on the second Water Cycle Puzzle page. Peel off the backing and adhere these stickers to the back of the shapes you just cut out. Glue the cardboard Water Cycle page with holes to the other cereal box rectangle (brown side up). Let dry. 

Then, get ready for some puzzle fun.