We Love Science!

Fourth grade studies water throughout the year. We are lucky enough to have monthly visits from Mr. Duff from Portland Water District, who brings awesome hands-on lessons. Today was our first lesson. We learned 3 key points. The first is that 75% of the world is covered by water.

We played a game where Mr. Duff tossed the ball to each person. We kept track of whatever your right thumb was touching...land or water.

Jaden kept track of the responses. You can see that most people landed on water!

Next, Mr. Duff did a demonstration to show how much of the world's water is drinkable.

Earlier in the day, students had made predictions about this at morning meeting.

We imagined that all the world's water could fit into a one-gallon jug. 50% of that water, or 1/2, would be the Pacific Ocean. Another 25%, or 1/4, would be the Atlantic Ocean. And most of the last 25% is other salt water, such as the various seas around the world. 

Only 3% of the world's water is fresh, and much of that is trapped in glaciers. Less than 1% of all the world's water is available for drinking! This really made us think about how important it is to protect our water sources and not to waste water!

The last activity we did was called "The Incredible Journey". Students got to be water molecules, traveling through the water cycle.

There were nine stations around the room with all the places that water can be found.

At each station, you put a color-coded bead on the pipe cleaner and rolled the dice.

The die would tell you to either move to a new station, or stay where you were, because sometimes water gets trapped places for a long time.

We realized that the water cycle is much more complex than just evaporation, condensation, and precipitation!

By looking at the order of the beads, you could retell your water cycle journey.

Everyone had a different journey!

We recorded our journeys on paper and shared them with a partner. 

Look for more science in the coming weeks. We are learning about states of matter and will be doing some cool experiments.