It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Water Cycle Bangles}

Water cycle bangles have become popular accessories at recent science fairs and environmental festivals. Today, Frannie will help you make your own.

The water cycle describes all the pathways a water drop can move through the atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere (air, land, and water systems). There are many steps to the water cycle, so making a water cycle bangle will help you remember them all!

Here's what you will need:

• A Pipe cleaner (or string, twine, strip of leather, etc.)
• 7/8" pony beads in eight different colors (2-3 beads of each color)
• A Water cycle illustration (there is one provided below)

Instructions:

1. Review the water cycle vocabulary.  Each word represents a different stage of the water cycle.  Check out Frannie's water cycle post to get familiar with vocabulary terms.
2. Assign each vocabulary word a different color bead.
3. Pick a place in the water cycle illustration below to begin your journey.
4. Twist a loop on one end of the pipe cleaner or tie a knot in the end of your string. This will prevent the beads from sliding off the end.
5. Add a bead to your pipe cleaner and decide where to go next.  Use the water cycle illustration above to help you decide.  Remember if you start in a cloud you can't directly go to the lake, you must first become rain (or another form of precipitation: Can you name one?)
6. Each new place traveled will earn you a new bead.
7. After you have completed the water cycle a few times, connect the ends of your pipe cleaner to create a bangle bracelet to wear!

Frannie loves her bangle!  Now if someone asks her about it, she can share what she learned about the water cycle!

This activity is featured in the Let's Keep It Clean - "Brownie" Girl Scout Patch guide book. By completing two activities from the booklet you earn your Ask Me About Groundwater patch.  Get inspired and do more to earn your Let's Keep It Clean patch!