Evaporation and Condensation!

Water Goes Into the Air....Water Comes Out of the Air

The children engaged in a lesson on evaporation during this past week.  They used a paintbrush to "paint" a water picture on construction paper.  We then used our science skills of observing and wondering!  The children enjoyed watching the water disappear from the paper.  We had many thoughts and "wonders" about where the water went.  Some thought the water may have gone inside the paper so we ripped up the paper to see.  We found no water.  Still others predicted that the water went into the air and turned to water vapor.
The following day, we experimented with water coming out of the air.  We used a "hot pot" and a tray with ice on top to see what would happen.  We carefully observed the steam coming up from the hot pot and hitting the bottom of the ice tray.  The kids started to notice that something was forming on the bottom of the pan.  It then began to rain!!  They loved this!  We wondered about where the water came from and our ideas ranged from "It came through the pan" to "It is the water vapor, like how clouds form!"  We even had our photographer, Eric, capture some pictures of our findings.