Wonderfully Wet Water!

The weather report suggested that today would be full of rain, so I thought it would be great to think about water and rain today. What a surprise to have a full day of bright sunshine instead! No matter - we still thought about the water cycle and how important water is to people, animals and plants around the world.

To start thinking about how clouds work, we played with tissues. They were light and very white at first - we could blow them easily into the air. Then we started dipping them bit by bit into water. They went a bit greyer and got too heavy to stay in the air for long. Finally they became so sodden that water dripped out of them. Rain!

How does rain get into the clouds? You might want to try the experiment we tried together at home. Get some very hot water into a glass jar and cover it with a lid with ice on it. When the hot water meets cold air, it condenses, then precipitates as rain.

We also noticed that when we added food colouring to the water, it made the rain coloured as well, just like how when water is very polluted, it can cause some of the pollutants to get into the rain too. Not good.

Our first picture book today was 'Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain' by Verna Aardema.  In some parts of the world, like the African Plain in the story, water is very precious and people hope for rain so their crops and cattle won't die.

Beach time! As we walked down, we looked at a storm water drain that had been blocked up in last night's storm. Among the leaves and mud, we found some rubbish that we removed, clearing the drain itself when we came back.

The storm water outlet pipe at the beach was gushing water out in a big waterfall but we couldn't get right to it because of the high tide. Instead, we played in a big tree and explored the forest, picking up rubbish as we went. It was sad to see how many people don't seem to care about keeping nature beautiful and throw things on the ground, even when rubbish bins are nearby.

After lunch, we read another book, 'Water, Water!' by Window on the World. Photos showed us how people in other countries treat water. We saw more pictures of farmers in African countries, standing by dry, cracked ground, while in Bangladesh, the rain was pouring! One interesting observation was that many people didn't have taps at home and they had to carry water from a river or a well to their houses. They bathed with cups and buckets and were careful not to use much water.

We finished the day by 'rain painting.' Colouring thick paper in with watercolour pencils, we then 'rained' on it outside to blend the colours and see what would happen. They got so much brighter and some fabulous colour mixing happened.

Water charades and Duck Duck Goose ended our time together for today.

We are very privileged to have so much clean water in New Zealand. Let's treat it like the treasure it is!


Ideas for home:
- Monitor your water use at home. What do you use it for? How much do you think you use? Can you think of any ways to reduce your water use?
- Create your own 'rain paintings' next time it rains. Paint some thick paper with watercolour paint, food colouring, cordial sachet powder or watercolour pencils, then put it out in the light rain for a while. See what the rain does to your art!
- Blocked storm water drains can be a problem in New Zealand after heavy rain because areas flood when the water can't drain away. Can you design a better system to stop this happening?
- Think of the countries we visited in the 'Water, Water!' book. Which one/s would you enjoy visiting or living in and why? Which one/s do you think would be the hardest to live in and why?
- Design a poster encouraging people to not pollute water. What do you think are the main things that pollute water in New Zealand?
- Try our science experiments again at home to teach your family about water and rain.