Where water is found on Earth
Identify where water is found on Earth and understand that water can exist as solid (ice) or liquid, recognising water in oceans, rivers, glaciers, and underground
What a learner can do afterwards
- List where water is found on Earth: oceans, rivers, lakes, glaciers, underground, atmosphere
- Explain that water exists as liquid (rivers, oceans) and solid (ice, glaciers, snow)
- Recognise that most of Earth's water is in the oceans
The lesson
You live on a planet covered in water. People call Earth the blue planet because oceans stretch across most of it. But water isn't only in the ocean. You can also find it in rivers, lakes, deep underground, frozen into ice on mountains, and even floating as tiny drops in the air above you.
On a hike, Amir crosses a river, passes a well where people pump water up from underground, and spots a glacier high on the mountain, a huge block of ice. Back home, his freezer turns tap water into ice cubes: the same freezing you already know turns liquid water solid on that glacier too.
If you're not sure where to look for water, remember it can be flowing (rivers), still (lakes), salty (oceans), frozen (ice), or hiding out of sight (underground).
Water fills oceans, rivers, and lakes, hides underground, and freezes solid into ice, and nearly all of it is salty ocean water.
Watch it
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
8 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.