Water and Landforms for Kids: Create, Explore, and Save.

Letter W Is for Water and Wind. Water Theme Preschool Activities.

We found a beautiful water book and talked about all things water and wind while practicing our /w/ sound. Why do we need to save water? Where can we find water? We used kinetic sand and glass gems to create and explore different landforms. This exploration is part of our Creative ABCs series: Creative ABCs. Our wind activities can be found here: Easy Preschool Science: Testing the Wind.

All the Water in the World

"All the Water in the World" by George Ella Lyon opens up the world full of water. The book is not an average beginner science book though. It gently guides kids through with the fun and engaging rhymes - so beautiful! Every page is a tasteful flow of water, words, rhymes, and thoughts.

Montessori Inspired Hands-on Exploration: Landforms with Kinetic Sand and Glass Gems

Instead of using pre made models of landforms, we created our own and tested them to feel the difference. I think these activities are nice as the first presentation as well as review and expand activities.

We started with the desert (pictured above). My Firefly spent extra time exploring the concept of the land with no water, all yellow-brown pages, and a tray with sand spread in a single layer with nothing else added.

Pictured above:
Picture 1. We made a small hole in the sand and filled it with gems. This became an all familiar pond.

Picture 2. We moved the sand to the edges of the tray and created a much larger body of water. Discussed the sea and the ocean, salt water.

Picture 3. An island. I asked her to guide a fish around the island to see if the fish can make it all around the island. Hence the new definition: an island is when the fish can make a circle around it with no problem.

Picture 4. We connected our island to the main land. Can fish make a full circle now? Ooops, it is not an island any more! But the toy person can walk through now - with the water on both sides.

Kinetic sand turned out perfect for creating different landforms. Of course, her journey ended with the exploding mountains and puddles of "water". I love how easy this sand is to clean up!

We continued working on the scissor skills and cutting out circles. This is the second session for My Firefly and she made them all by herself! Our previous cutting circles practice can be found here: Adorable 3-D Foam Chicks - Scissors Skills Practice.

This time the circles supposed to be Earth with all the water and some land. We observed the globe again to notice different shades of blue and large areas of blue for the oceans on Earth. Kids were offered a basket of crayons with several shades of blue.

My Firefly could not stop cutting out her circles. One of them became Earth, but the rest had to be smiley faces. So we had to end our session with lots of smiles :)

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