Weather School / First Weather · ages 2 to 5

The weather rock sitting in a big blue puddle on a sunny day, with rings spreading around it and a few raindrops still falling.

Puddles

Where do puddles go when the rain stops?

The weather rock outside under rain falling, waiting to be looked at.

The mission: guess first, then go look

Find the biggest puddle near your door and guess: will it still be there after lunch? Bigger, smaller, or gone?

Visit it again later and check. Was your guess right? Nobody took it away in a truck. So where did it go?

When the rain stops, some of the water stays behind in the low spots.

That is a puddle: a little pond that was not there yesterday.

Then the sun sips the puddle back up into the air, so slowly you cannot see it happen.

Professor Weather Rock in a graduation cap, pointing upward with a wooden pointer.

Professor Weather Rock says

Every puddle is on a round trip. The sun lifts the water into the air, the air builds a cloud, and someday the very same water rains down again.

Rocktivity Time!

Pick a door. Every door is a good one.

Move like the weather

Be a puddle. Lie down flat and wide on the floor. Now the sun comes out: shrink slower than slow, smaller and smaller, until you disappear into the air with a whoosh only you can hear.

Ask them

“Where do you think the puddle water goes?”

The Rocktivity

Stomp in the middle of a puddle, then right at the edge. Which splash is bigger? Now try a tiptoe splash and a giant stomp splash. Somebody should probably be wearing boots.

When the rain has just stopped, try this

Draw a chalk line around your puddle's edge, and a new line each time you come back. Guess how many rings you will draw before the puddle is gone. The sun is drinking it, one ring at a time.

Is the rock right?

You looked with your own eyes. The rock is outside looking too. Ask it what it sees, then decide together who read the sky better.

Words we learned

Splashverbsay it: SPLASHTo make water jump by landing in it.

Mudnounsay it: MUDDirt that got rained on and went soft.

For the grown-up

The chalk rings are evaporation, drawn in real time. You never need the word: the water went into the air, and one day it will fall out of a cloud again. That round trip is the water cycle, and they just watched a lap of it.

Take it off the screen

A colouring sheet with the big word to trace, plus the whole lesson in print. Free for any home or classroom.

Print the colouring sheet and lesson (PDF)

The trail continues

Next rain, watch the water that does not stay for the puddle. It is going somewhere, all of it, and it is not telling you where.

When you come back, The Rain's Path follows the traveling water.