On Monday 20th May, Year 4 students from Caversham Preparatory School visited Leighton Park to participate in an engaging Science Workshop focused on the water cycle. The workshop featured a mix of outdoor activities, classroom sessions, and hands-on experiments in the science lab, designed to make learning about the water cycle both educational and enjoyable.
The workshop began with a short explanation, then the students constructed their own water molecule models, H2O molymods. Using coloured balls and sticks to represent hydrogen and oxygen atoms, the children learned about molecular structure and bonding in a tactile and visual manner. This activity helped them grasp the basic composition of water molecules and set the stage for understanding more complex concepts.
The session then moved outdoors. Here students acted out the behaviour of molecules in different states of matter. They pretended to be tightly packed solid molecules, freely flowing liquid molecules, and widely spaced gas molecules. This interactive exercise helped illustrate the concepts of molecular motion and state changes in a fun and memorable way.
Next, Leighton Park’s Head of Chemistry, Emilia Hicks, took the children to look at a ‘Solar Still’ that her colleague, Ellie Millard, had set up earlier. A solar still is a simple device that uses the sun’s energy to purify water through the process of evaporation and condensation; using a large bowl of salty water with a smaller empty bowl sat in the middle, clingfilm taught across the top and a stone to weigh it down in the centre. As the sun heated the dirty water, it had begun to evaporate. The water vapor rose and condensed on the underside of the plastic wrap, forming droplets that ran down the plastic wrap towards the lowest point created by the weight, eventually dripping into the smaller container. Through this experiment, the students observed a natural method of water purification that mimics the Earth’s water cycle.
The highlight of the workshop for many, including Caversham Prep students Ella, Peach, Deniz and Henry, was the science lab activities, where they achieved their ‘Bunsen Burner License’ and participated in a water distillation experiment. Students were given samples of sea water and learned the process of filtering and distillation to purify it. With the help of some of Leighton Park’s Chemistry A Level students, the children used Bunsen burners to heat the salt-water to boiling point and observed the evaporation and condensation processes first-hand.
By participating in these varied activities, Year 4 students from Caversham Preparatory School gained a comprehensive understanding of the water cycle. Reflecting on the Science Workshop, Caversham Preparatory School’s Year 4 Class Teacher, Andrea Hutchison, commented “The students had a fabulous time and it embedded their prior knowledge in a more practical, scientific way”. Meanwhile Avi (Year 4) said that the day would have been even better if “we could have stayed for longer!”
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