How do rain puddles form science lesson

Hi, this is Future Ticia 2024, back in 2010 when I wrote this, I wrote it fairly quickly, when blogging was a very different style of writing. I was looking back at some of our past science lessons and discovered this very early earth science lesson for homeschool preschool that came about from a car ride when my son asked how do rain puddles form and decided to update it so it’s more helpful for anyone else wanting to duplicate the lesson. Okay, back to Past Ticia 2010.

So, this is an automated post.  I’m trying this idea, of when I do more than one experiment in a week to write the post and put it up as a draft to post sometime when I haven’t done something…….   Here goes,
As we were driving home in the rain Superman asked me, “Mommy why are there puddles?”
Ding!  Experiment here.  So I did a quick explanation of why, and then we got home and it wasn’t raining we did the experiment to see why.  (I needed it to not be raining so I could gather dry versions of our supplies).

(there are affiliate links in here)

Question:  How do we get puddles when it rains?

Theory: The ground gets too full of water, so it comes out on top of the ground as puddles.

Supplies needed to learn How we get rain puddles

clear glass jar (I used baby food jars, but I linked to mason jars), dirt, and something to pour water with (I’m linking to a nice set of measuring cups)

Quick comment on why I’m linking to glass jars and measuring cups

Future Ticia 2024 is back.

When my kids were in preschool, Montessori and Charlotte Mason were all over the homeschool blogs at the time and they talked a lot about teaching your kids how to use “REAL MATERIALS,” so that they were not scared of using cups or glasses as they grew up. I could see a lot of wisdom in this advice. So my kids have always used glass and from a young age have learned how to use knives responsibly, and as a result as young adults are now fully capable of cooking any meal they want to and no tools in the kitchen scare them.

Back to Past Ticia 2010

Learning how puddles are formed

1.  Pour dirt into the jar until it is about half full.  Make observations about the dirt.
With some gentle prodding they noticed there were empty spots in the dirt.

2.  Pour in water.  Of course, because a lot of what I was using was potting soil it didn’t mix super well.  But it achieved the goal.  They were able to see that a puddle formed on top after the ground ran out of space for the water.

Success!

Where do puddles go Resources

• Where do Puddles Go book
• Puddles!

More Early Learning Resources

Okay, let’s pick out some more great early-learning resources

• Zoo animal craft book
• Me on the Map: My Neighborhood
• How to memorize the continents
• Preschool Calendar Time
• Chores your preschooler should do

• Puddle by Ian Capper, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• W.carter, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons