Once upon a time, far, far away, there lived a water droplet named Rainy.
He loved to play and go to school, but most of all, he loved meeting new friends while following his path on the water cycle -- You know; evaporation, condensation, precipitation...? Through this process, Rainy does not stay the same. In fact, he changes between a liquid, gas and solid, depending on his path. This would be a good place to get some student involvement and ask them what they think happens to rainy when he’s a liquid, a solid, and a gas. After they are done discussing what they think happens to Rainy, continue on with the story. Listen closely to learn more.
One day, while swimming in the ocean with all of his water droplet friends, Rainy decided to come to the surface where he could enjoy some sunshine. While swimming along and soaking in the sun, he turns into vapor, rising up into the air, evaporating, floating up, up, into the sky! As he was floating up, he noticed that he and some of his friends were starting to cool off. They were condensing and forming into a big white puffy cloud. He wasn’t scared though, because he had been on this ride many times before. He first evaporates because of the heat from the sun and then he rises up. Then, he cools off, condensing and joining other water droplets to form a cloud. The big puffy cloud then travels over the land and Rainy (along with a lot of his new friends) falls down onto the ground as rain or snow, also known as precipita- tion. Sometimes he freezes up and turns into solid ice! If you wanted to gain more involvement from the students you could ask them what Rainy becomes if he becomes frozen (hail). From there, he would often find himself on a fun rollercoaster ride, riding down the river like a whitewater rafter, ending up back in the ocean all over again. This time though, as he condensed into the cloud and traveled over the land, he began to precipitate as rain... expecting to ride the river back to the
ocean... But this time was going to be different. This time, instead of falling onto the land, he fell into a rain gauge! Wow! What are the chances? Well, Rainy felt pretty lucky, because now he was going to get to meet some new friends. Not more water droplets this time, but people like you!
He knew that if he waited in the rain gauge, someone would come to check on him in the morning. As the sun came up, Rainy started to look around, and
he noticed a nearby flagpole and a big building. “I hope I’m at a school”, Rainy said, “Because I just love to teach kids about my ride throughout the water cycle. Sure enough, at 7:00 AM, someone came out and picked up the gauge to look at it. Rainy could see that she was young, perhaps 10 years old? Rainy knew that whoever it was, they were going to report on their computer how much rain was in the gauge. Rainy and the gauge were picked up by the student and were brought into the classroom. The teacher said, “Thank you for bringing in our daily rain measurement Lisa, how much rain is in the gauge?” Lisa replied, “I can see that the water level in the gauge reads point one eight.” “18 hundredths! Good job,” the teacher replied, “let’s make sure to report it on the website.”
What happens to Rainy next? It is up to you! Write a short story below about Rainy’s adventure... from the school rain gauge back to the water supply; either into a lake, river or ocean...
