Water Cycle Jeopardy

A ready-made water cycle review board for elementary and middle school. Copy it free, put it on the projector, and let students buzz in from their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

For the classroom

Copies all 30 clues into an editor of your own. Free, no account needed.

Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

Evaporation and Condensation

$200
Heat from the sun turns liquid water in lakes and oceans into this invisible gas.
What is water vapor?
$400
This is the name for liquid water changing into a gas.
What is evaporation?
$600
This star supplies the energy that drives the water cycle.
What is the Sun?
$800
These tiny water droplets form on grass on a cool, clear morning.
What is dew?
$1,000
This is the name for water vapor escaping from the leaves of plants.
What is transpiration?

Precipitation

$200
This is the most common kind of precipitation, falling as liquid drops.
What is rain?
$400
This precipitation falls as six-sided ice crystals.
What is snow?
$600
These balls of ice grow inside thunderstorm clouds and can dent a car.
What is hail?
$800
This precipitation is made of raindrops that freeze into small ice pellets before they reach the ground.
What is sleet?
$1,000
Scientists use this tool to measure how much rain has fallen.
What is a rain gauge?

Where Earth's Water Is

$200
About 97 percent of Earth's water is salt water found in these.
What are the oceans?
$400
Most of Earth's fresh water is frozen in these huge, slow-moving rivers of ice and in ice caps.
What are glaciers?
$600
Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario make up this group of freshwater lakes.
What are the Great Lakes?
$800
This layer of air around Earth holds water vapor and clouds.
What is the atmosphere?
$1,000
The ice sheet covering this southernmost continent holds most of the world's frozen fresh water.
What is Antarctica?

Groundwater and Watersheds

$200
This is the name for water that soaks into the ground and fills the spaces in soil and rock.
What is groundwater?
$400
People dig this deep hole to pump water up from underground.
What is a well?
$600
This is the process of water soaking down into the ground.
What is infiltration?
$800
This is water that flows over the ground into streams instead of soaking in.
What is runoff?
$1,000
This is an underground layer of rock or sand that holds water people can pump out.
What is an aquifer?

Clouds and Weather

$200
This is a cloud that forms right down at ground level.
What is fog?
$400
These puffy white clouds look like cotton balls.
What are cumulus clouds?
$600
These thin, wispy clouds form very high in the sky and are made of ice crystals.
What are cirrus clouds?
$800
These flat gray clouds cover the whole sky like a blanket.
What are stratus clouds?
$1,000
This is the name for a scientist who studies and forecasts the weather.
What is a meteorologist?

Water Vocabulary

$200
This is water in its solid state.
What is ice?
$400
This is the name for the never-ending trip water makes between Earth's surface and the sky.
What is the water cycle?
$600
Water that is not salty, like the water in most lakes and rivers, is called this.
What is fresh water?
$800
Farmers bring water to their crops through pipes, ditches or sprinklers in this process.
What is irrigation?
$1,000
This is the name for ice turning straight into water vapor without melting first.
What is sublimation?

Final Jeopardy — The Cycle in Order

This is the term for water vapor turning back into liquid water, usually high in the atmosphere, the step that forms clouds.

What is condensation?

How to run this board

Evaporation, condensation, precipitation and collection each get their own moment, alongside a category on where Earth's water actually sits and one on the weather the cycle produces along the way.

Younger students often know the vocabulary but mix up the order of the steps, so a quick diagram on the board before you start pays off more than reviewing any single term twice.

This board plays well as a whole-class review with hands rather than phones for the youngest grades - the questions are short enough that a fast pace does not lose anyone.

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