DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING
RANDOM NUMBER CUBES

The Water Cycle Activity
A Teacher's Lesson Plan

Overview

This grid indicates nine places that water can stay momentarily during the water cycle. You need to make a random number cube (at one time called dice - shhhh!) for each of the nine stations.

Since water droplets falling to the earth accumulate in different places on the earth's surface and stay in these places for varying amounts of time, the dice at each station vary. By using the dice, the students will begin to understand that the patterns of the water cycle vary according to the location of the falling water droplets.
 

 

SOIL 
  

PLANTS 
  

RIVERS 
 

LAKES 
  

CLOUDS 
  

OCEANS 
 

ANIMALS 
  

GROUND
WATER 
  

GLACIERS

DIRECTIONS
Draw illustrations on each face of the boxes that will be used as the random number cube.
 

Soil Station Cube
  • 2 sides- clouds
  • 1 side - rivers 
  • 1 side - plants 
  • 1 side - groundwater 
  • 1 side - stay
  • STAY means the water 

    • droplet stays at the station

    Plant Station Cube

    • 4 sides - clouds 
    • 2 sides - stay
    River Station Cube 
    • 1 side - animals 
    • 1 side - lakes 
    • 1 side - groundwater 
    • 1 side - oceans 
    • 1 side - clouds 
    • 1 side - stay
    Lake Station Cube
    • 2 sides - stay 
    • 1 side - clouds 
    • 1 side - oceans 
    • 1 side - groundwater 
    • 1 side - lakes
    Cloud Station Cube
    • 1 side - soil 
    • 1 side - lakes 
    • 1 side - glaciers 
    • 1 side - stay 
    • 2 sides - oceans
    Ocean Station Cube
    • 2 sides - clouds 
    • 4 sides - stay
    Animal Station Cube
    • 2 sides - soil 
    • 3 sides - clouds 
    • 1 side - stay
    Ground water Station Cube
    • 3 sides - stay 
    • 2 sides - lakes 
    • 1 side - rivers
    Glacier Station Cube
    • 1 side - groundwater 
    • 1 side - clouds 
    • 1 side - rivers 
    • 3 sides - stay

    RUNNING THE ACTIVITY
    The children become the water droplets and are responsible for recording their own paths in the water cycle. (You might have them predict beforehand where they think the water droplets will spend the most time) Each student has a piece of paper with the name of each of the stations. They are divided into 9 equal groups again and line up at each of the nine stations. They take turns throwing the dice at the station and they record where they go. (Example: Child one starts at the glacier station. They make a tally mark by the glacier station on their paper. When the shake the dice, they might get "stay". They make another tally mark by the glacier station on their paper and go to the end of the line at the same station. When they get another turn, they might get "rivers", so they make a tally by the river station on their paper and go to the end of the line at the river station).

    The activity continues with the water droplets (children) flowing around the room in the pattern of the water cycle and making tally marks as they go. After about 20 minutes, the teacher stops the flow of the water droplets and has them add up their tally marks for each station.

    Students then get together in equal groups and add up their totals for each station. The teacher then calls for group totals and puts them on the board to come up with one large group total for each of the 9 stations. At this point, the students discuss which stations have the largest totals and forecast possible causes for the differences.

    A small group of students can then take these totals and enter them in a spreadsheet using Microsoft works, word, excel, or Clarisworks. From the spreadsheet, they can create graphs that will show them the percentage of time that the water droplets were at each station.

    Variations


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