Essential Question: What are the unique properties of water?
Outdoor Focus Questions:
Water for Life:
K – 1st: What are the parts of plants? Find a plant growing outside. Draw or glue it into your
notebook and label the parts.
2nd – 5th: How do plants survive in their environment? Find plants growing in two different
environments (dry and wet; sunny and shady). Describe the environment each plant lives in and
compare the structures that help it survive.
6th: How do biotic and abiotic factors interact in an ecosystem? Find a plant outside. Describe the
living and non-living factors in the environment and how they interact with the plant.
7th: What are some of the ways plants maintain stable internal conditions in different habitats
while external conditions change? What evidence can you find of plant transpiration?
8th: What evidence can you find of human effect on water systems?
Water on Earth Materials:
K – 2nd: What are the properties of sources of natural water? Observe, describe and compare
bodies of water found outside.
3rd -4th: What is soil? Explore and record the properties of different types of soil outside, including
capacity to retain water.
4th-5th: How are landforms formed? Use a model to demonstrate how land surfaces can change
through weathering, erosion, and deposition.
7th: What are different types of weathering? Find evidence of the effects of weathering, erosion
and deposition outside.
8th – What erosional features can you identify outside? Predict how weathering can reshape them.
Weather and Water:
K-1: What is weather? Observe and compare the air temperature and wind speed at different
locations outside.
2nd: How does the sun affect water? Observe and record what happens to water in the sunshine.
3rd– 5th and 8th: How does the sun affect wind and water? Observe, measure, and compare
weather conditions in different locations outside.
6th and 8th: How is heat energy transferred? Find evidence of thermal energy transfer outside.
What is the connection to weather?
Vargas and Velez 2012