The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks–Learning About The Water Cycle

For this month’s Children’s Book Club, Steph and Jess suggested we read the book The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks by Joanna Cole. Both of my boys love The Magic School Bus – both the books and the TV series! At The Waterworks is the original Magic School Bus book!

“Join Ms. Frizzle and her students as they follow the trail of water, from its sky-high source to the school bathroom sink on this wet and wild fieldtrip. After parking the school bus on a cloud and shrinking to raindrop size, Ms. Frizzle’s class gets to see the waterworks from the water’s point of view.”

Simon and I started out our activities by discussing the water cycle and it’s main parts: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. We used this website to learn about it. We also printed a coloring page for Simon from the same site.

On some of the coloring pages there are suggestions for a water cycle related experiment, which Simon was excited to try. Here is our version.

1. Freeze a large piece of cardboard for at least one hour.

2. Boil water and observe the steam evaporation.

3. Hold the cold piece of cardboard about 1 foot over the steam coming from the boiling water (wear oven mitts!) Water droplets form as you are creating condensation.

4. Hold the cardboard in the steam long enough that the condensation drips back off of it – precipitation!

Many of the activities related to The Magic School Bus At The Waterworks focus on the water cycle, but you can also learn about how your city gets its water, how water gets to your house, the weather, why the Earth needs water, water pollution, water conservation, etc. Here are some Pinteresting ideas I found!

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