FUNTIMES HOME EDUCATION

Water

We started this topic by looking at a big map of the surrounding area. We have a river close to where we live and have had the pleasure of a couple of canal boat trips along it, through a lock, to finish at a local park. When we studied the map more closely, we were amazed to see so many other tiny rivers running through towns and villages close to us, all eventually leading to the sea. We used this as a starting point to investigate how water changes on its course to the open estuary.

Using a lovely interactive site from the BBC, which also has printable worksheets, we read about "How Rivers Change". This covers how water starts in its upper course, i.e. in the mountains or on high ground, becoming smaller, like a river, as it moves to its middle course, meandering and fast in pace, until it reaches the lower course where it slows and ends at an estuary or a lake. Explanations of unusual words are provided during this and the water cycle sections to help understand the process.

We moved on, still using the BBC site, to get to grips with the water cycle. K had covered this at school, so once we'd looked at how the cycle runs for B and a recap for K, we made our own water cycle model to help our understanding of it and to learn some of the correct terms used to describe each part of the cycle.

Using a heavy cardboard base, we scrunched up newspaper and glued them around one edge of the cardboard. When dry, we painted the newspaper in greens and browns to resemble the hills with a blue river running into the sea. We painted the flat base blue and white to resemble the sea and added some sand, a sailing boat and little person sunbathing for authenticity! Using straws with plastacine as a sturdy base, we attached an orange sun for "evaporation", a cotton wool cloud for "condensation" and rain for "precipitation".

(A) Evaporation is when the warmth from the sun heats up the water to produce vapour or steam that goes into the air.

(B) Condensation happens when the vapour in the air gets cold and turns back into liquid forming clouds.

(C) Precipitation happens when the cloud is so full of condensed vapour that the air cannot hold it any longer so it falls back to earth in the form of rain, hail, sleet or snow.

(D) Collection of the fallen water ensures that the cycle starts all over again. The water may fall straight back into the seas, oceans and rivers, or it my land on the hills and mountains and either trickle back down to a lower collection of water, or sink into the ground to aid the survival of plants and animals.

See Kidzone for further clarification of the water cycle.

Understanding about the water cycle is one thing, but it is important to learn to be aware of how we may be damaging the environment through lack of knowledge relating to every day use of water. We looked at water use in our own home, where the header tank is stored and how water is available at the turn of the tap. We also went on a water hydrant search in our local area. We were surprised to see that there weren't many hydrant signs around, but luckily there was one directly opposite our house! With this information on board we ask a fireman how much water each engine holds in its tanks - apparently, it's enough to put out a standard house fire, any more water required would come from the hyrdants.

We read a story from National Geographic, and studied a picture to help us realise how careless are may be in our everyday actions, and then the children drew up a small poster giving some hints on how we may change.

Litter that is thrown on the floor may be blown into a pond and pollute it.
Don't pour oil or petrol from you car down the storm drain, this water may travel straight to the rivers. Oil spills should be soaked up with wood shavings or cat litter and taken to the dump to be disposed of properly.
Rather than wash you car at home and let chemicals travel down the storm drain, go to a car wash instead where the chemicals and water will automatically end up at the treatment centre.
Use a watering can rather than a hose to conserve water, and be aware of chemical plant feeds which may eventually be washed into the storm drain and may eventually lead to rivers.
Water and waste from the house automatically gets washed away to be treated.

These points really made us think how lack of knowledge can lead to us not caring for the environment as we should.

Changes to the environment have also caused flooding problems in many areas of the UK, we got an idea of the damage flooding can do by reading past news reports. We also read about the terrible flood of East Anglia in 1953 from the Environment Agency website, which has many informative pages on this subject. We each made lists of the important things we should do if it was announced that our home would be flooded due to bad weather. It was surprising how many everyday things we did not include, like what we would do with our pets, what important documents we would take with us and even turning off the gas!

The best and most fun part of this project was to actually clean our own dirty water with the help of 4learning.co.uk. By pouring muddy water through a series of different layers of materials like kitchen paper towel, sand, gravel, and cotton wool, all of which in turn trap the dirt in the water, we were left with cleaner water. Although the website states that you shouldn't drink this water, we boiled our sample and had a drink once it was cooled - it tasted fine and we had no ill effects from it!