the incredible journey water cycle game

The Incredible Journey Game: Understanding the Water Cycle One Drop at a Time

Kristina Watts

There’s nothing on this earth more essential to life than water. Seventy-one % of the globe is covered in water, so it seems like we have an endless supply. However, about 97% of our water is in the salty oceans, and about 2% is currently stored in ice caps and glaciers. That leaves 1% of our water available as the freshwater all of us land-dwelling animals and plants require. Water scarcity is a real problem in many parts of the world, and as our global climate changes, conflicts are likely. Current U.S. leaders don’t seem to take the need for water conservation seriously. Is a lack of understanding of the water cycle at least partially to blame for this? 

Enter environmental education for our future generations. The water cycle is one of my favorite topics to teach to children, but the typical cyclical diagram may be misleading in its over simplification. Plus, children tend to learn best by doing . That’s why I really like the Incredible Journey water cycle game by Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) . It teaches the participants that there isn’t just one path that a water molecule might take, and there are certain places where water is more likely to stay for a long time than others. If you’re looking for fun environmental lesson activities to do with a group of children, this game is for you.

The premise of the activity is simple: you are a water droplet, about to travel on your journey around the Earth. The activity area (I like to use a large lawn space or big empty room) is set up with stations: ocean, lake, river, clouds, glacier, plants, animals, soil, and ground water. Each station has a cube (a die), marked with various stations. Each participant starts in one location, then rolls the die to determine where on their journey they’ll go next. The dice are not entirely random – they are weighted to approximate the likelihood of reaching anther spot (for example, the oceans cube is likely to keep you “trapped” in the ocean for a while rather than sending you on to the clouds.)

The method of tracking where each water droplet goes can be adjusted for the age of your group. Older students can track their journey on a worksheet, and then after a certain number of turns, the students can graph and statistically analyze the group’s results. But for younger kids – which is the audience I usually work with – the activity turns into a fun game when each child is given a piece of string to start with and collects a bead at each station (each station has a designated color bead). The children create a colorful necklace tracking their journey. At the end, no two participants’ necklaces are the same, but when we look at all the necklaces together, we can see that certain colors are more prevalent – telling us, for example, that a water droplet spends more time swimming around in the ocean or frozen in a glacier than in a stream or inside of an animal.  You can focus your introductory and concluding discussions however you like – the energy that powers each transition, the effect of the water in each location, potential pollution sources at each stage, etc.

I’ve led this game with Girl Scout troops, for a church Earth Day celebration, and at nature center summer camps, and each time I’m actually surprised at how much fun the kids have, running from station to station and growing their collection of necklace beads. (Make sure you have enough beads!  I’ve had to end the game not because the kids are ready to stop but because the supply runs out.)  It’s education in motion.

This activity is available for purchase at https://www.projectwet.org/resources/materials/discover-incredible-journey-water-through-water-cycle (assembly required). Or you can borrow it from the Fairfax County Soil and Water Conservation District; see https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/soil-water-conservation/enviroscape-watershed-model-classroom-presentation-lesson-kits for details.

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Spokane County Water Resource Center

• Activity 1: Erosion & The Power of Plants
• Activity 2: Stormwater & the Power of Plants
• Activity 3: Stormwater Plinko & Probability
• Activity 4: Drippy Water Cycle Story
• Activity 5: Cloud Demonstration Video

Activity 6: Incredible Journey Water Cycle Game

• Activity 7: Make a Water Cycle in a Bag
• Quiz: What did you learn in the Spokane County Water Resources booth?

Pretend you are a water drop traveling through different places in the water cycle.

Track the places you visit on a data sheet, and use the data you collect to write a story or create a comic strip about your journey. Follow the steps in the boxes below.

1. Incredible Journey Tracking Sheet

Print the Tracking Sheet so you can record where you land after each spin.

Don’t have a printer? No worries! Just grab a piece of paper and label 1-20 down the left side. After each spin write down what station you are at until you have taken 20 “spins” around the water cycle.

2. Incredible Journey Spinners

Choose any spinner to begin. Each spinner has a label in the center so you know what station it is. Click the spinner to make it go. You will then “travel” to your next station wherever the spinner lands. For example, if the spinner lands on animal, you would find the spinner that says animal in the center and spin that to see where you will go next.

3. Spin and Track

After each spin, mark your data sheet with an X under the column where you start, so you can keep track of all the places you go in the water cycle.

Spin 20 times. Any time you get STAY, just mark that same station on the next line. For example, if you spin the Groundwater spinner on turn 5 and it tells you to STAY you will mark an X under turn 6 to show that you stayed at groundwater for two turns in a row.

4. Write a Story or Create a Comic

After you are finished traveling through the water cycle, use the Incredible Journey Water Cycle Story Template or create a comic strip to write a story about the journey you took as a water drop.

Make your story as interesting as possible. For example, don’t just describe step by step the places you traveled, tell us a story! If you were a rain drop how would it feel to fall/precipitate down from a cloud high up in the sky? What would your temperature be if you became part of snowpack? If you got slurped up by an animal what animal was it and what did you feel like? Use your imagination and creativity to bring your story alive!

Don’t have a printer? No worries! Just grab a piece of paper to write your story or just draw your own comic strip boxes to fill in.

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A learning resource for youth.

The Incredible Journey

Water: the incredible journey.

The Water Cycle is an incredible journey. Water is found everywhere on earth in one form or another and it is constantly changing places. To see how the Water Cycle really works, play the Incredible Journey Game. See how long it takes you to pass through all the places where water is found on earth.

Incredible Journey Game and format description

There are nine stations in this game. The playing field shows each station depicted with an illustration and title (i.e.: picture of soil with the term soil). The player starts at any station and clicks to activate the cycle. They will be directed to go to the next station. The direction is random but controlled by the Water Cycle. As they click on a station, a counter keeps a record of the stations visited. The stations and their links are listed below. If the “STAY” link appears, the player must click on that respective station again until they are directed to a different station. The game is completed when all stations have been visited. When this occurs, a message pops up: “Congratulations! You have just completed the Incredible Journey.”

Station Links

SOIL – PLANT, RIVER, GROUNDWATER, CLOUDS, CLOUDS, STAY

PLANT – CLOUDS, CLOUDS, CLOUDS, CLOUDS, STAY, STAY

RIVER – LAK, GROUNDWATER, OCEAN, ANIMAL, CLOUDS, STAY

CLOUDS – SOIL, GLACIER, LAKE, OCEAN, OCEAN, STAY

OCEAN – CLOUDS, CLOUDS, STAY, STAY, STAY, STAY

LAKE – GROUNDWATER, ANIMAL, RIVER, CLOUDS, STAY, STAY

ANIMAL – SOIL, SOIL, CLOUDS, CLOUDS, CLOUDS, STAY

GROUNDWATER – RIVER, LAKE, LAKE, STAY, STAY, STAY

GLACIER – GROUNDWATER, CLOUDS, RIVER, STAY, STAY, STAY

INSTRUCTIONS TO PLAYER

This game presents a different version of the Water Cycle than just condensation, precipitation and evaporation. Play the Incredible Journey game to discover how water moves around the earth. Your challenge is to follow the movement of a molecule of water through all nine places where water is found. Be careful, you might get frozen in a glacier, trapped in deep, slow moving groundwater, or carried to the deepest parts of the ocean.

Start at any station. Click the station and proceed to the next station as indicated. If it indicates “STAY,” click on the station again. The counter tells you which stations you’ve visited and how many times you clicked on them. You complete the Incredible Journey when you have visited all nine stations. Good luck!

Revised for Website By: Eric Pollard, Graduate Student, Auburn University

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The Incredible Journey

Source institutions.

Quick Guide

Materials list (per group of students).

• 9 large pieces of paper
• pens or pencils
• notebooks or journals
• construction paper
• 9 boxes, about 6 inches on a side
• bell, whistle, buzzer, or some sound maker to indicate turns
• large room or play field
• water cycle
• evaporation
• precipitation
• groundwater
• Weather and Climate
• Oceans and Water
• Changes of Phase

Informal Categories

• Nature and Environment

To use this activity, learners need to:

Learning styles supported:.

• Involves hands-on or lab activities

Includes alignment to state and/or national standards:

• Ohio content standards are included on page 4 of the PDF.

This resource is part of:

• COSI on Wheels Teacher Pack for Current Conditions

Access Rights:

• Free access

Source Collection

• COSI on Wheels Teacher Packs
• All rights reserved , COSI Columbus, 2009

Water Cycle

Weather & climate, societal applications, water cycle dice game.

Many students think of the water cycle as a simple process, always following the same steps in the same order. The reality is much more complicated, as the water cycle dice game below endeavors to demonstrate. 

• "The Water Cycle Game" from the Arctic Climate Modeling Program

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PROGRAM OVERVIEW

This 60-minute Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) activity is available for 5th grade classrooms.  Students will role-play as a water molecule, which helps them conceptualize the water cycle as more than a two-dimensional path.  At the conclusion of the lesson, students will have made a water cycle bracelet that describes their “Incredible Journey” as a water molecule.  The objectives covered in the lesson include: the movement of water within the water cycle; the different states of water as it moves through the water cycle; the location of most of the water on Earth; and the concepts of evaporation and condensation.  As a language arts extension activity, teachers have the option of having students write a story about the water molecule’s journey.  The classroom activity directly correlates to the 5th grade Next Generation Science Standards.

© 2021 Kern County Water Agency | Bakersfield, California | 661-634-1400

The Incredible Journey- A Walk Through the Water Cycle

In this activity, taken from the Project Wet Curriculum and Activity Guide, students will become water molecules in the water cycle. Students will work as individual or pairs of water molecules to work their way through the various stages of the water cycle. They will see that water cycles through nine stations (clouds, plants, animals, rivers, oceans, lakes, ground water, soil and glaciers). Students will use their science notebooks to predict the ways that water moves through the water cycle and then record their results from the activity. Students then will explore the definitions of condensation and evaporation along with identifying the states water is in while it moves though the water cycle.

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