Lesson plan Grade 1 Art & Music

A Raindrop's Path: A Grade 1 Water Cycle Sequence Mural Lesson

A 45-minute grade 1 art lesson where students draw one stage of the water cycle and caption it with a temporal word to build a shared class mural in order.

Grade: Grade 1
Subject: Art & Music
Material: Lesson plan
Time: 45 min
Prep: Low prep
Materials: Mural paper or five large poster sheets, Crayons or markers, Tape, Four simple picture cards showing a cloud, falling rain, a river or puddle, and the sun (described in Procedure)

Standards

W.1.3 Common Core ELA

Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.

How this material aligns: Students caption their mural panel using temporal words such as first, next, then, and finally to sequence the sun warming water, a cloud forming, rain falling, and water collecting, so the finished class mural recounts ordered events; each student's single caption covers the temporal-word part of the standard.

All materials for W.1.3 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-07-15.

Objectives

Students will sequence the stages of the water cycle (sun warms water, cloud forms, rain falls, water collects) in the correct order.
Students will use at least one temporal word to caption their drawing.
Students will contribute one panel to a class mural depicting the water cycle in sequence.

Vocabulary

Evaporation: Evaporation happens when liquid water, often warmed by the sun, turns into an invisible gas called water vapor that rises into the air. It is how water leaves oceans, lakes, and puddles.
Condensation: Condensation is when water vapor in the air cools down and turns back into tiny liquid water droplets. It is how clouds form and why a cold glass gets wet on the outside on a warm day.
Precipitation: Precipitation is any water that falls from clouds to the ground, including rain, snow, sleet, and hail. It is the main way water returns from the sky to the surface of the Earth.

Teacher overview

This lesson turns the water cycle into a class art project instead of a diagram students only look at. Each student draws one stage of a raindrop's path, from sun-warmed water rising into the sky to rain falling and collecting in a river or puddle, and writes a caption using a temporal word. When every panel is taped up in order, the class has built a mural that tells the raindrop's story from beginning to end, and every student can point to the exact panel they contributed.

The lesson pairs a science idea, the repeating stages of the water cycle, with a grade 1 writing skill, sequencing events with temporal words, so the mural functions as both a science reference and a narrative-writing sample the class can revisit later in the year.

Procedure

Hook (5 min): Show four simple wordless picture cards out of order: a cloud, rain falling, a river or puddle, and the sun shining on water. Ask students to guess which picture comes first, second, third, and fourth, and why.

Direct instruction (10 min): Arrange the four cards in the correct order together as a class: the sun warms water so it rises into the sky, water vapor gathers into a cloud, the cloud releases rain, and the rain collects in a river or puddle before the sun warms it again. Introduce the temporal words first, next, then, and finally, and model drawing one stage on a poster sheet with a caption starter such as "First, the sun warms the water."

Creation (20 min): Assign each student or pair one stage of the cycle (Sun warms water, Cloud forms, Rain falls, Water collects in a river or puddle) so that all four stages are covered, with extra students adding a fifth panel showing the cycle starting again. Students draw their assigned stage on one large poster sheet using crayons or markers, then write or dictate one caption sentence that uses a temporal word.

Assembly and closure (10 min): Tape the panels to a classroom wall in the correct order to form one Raindrop's Path mural. Ask a volunteer from each panel to read their caption aloud in sequence, and have the rest of the class point to each stage as it is read.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Differentiation

Support (below grade level)

Provide caption sentence starters with the temporal word already written ("First, ___." "Next, ___.") so students only need to add the ending. Pair students who need support with a partner for the drawing step.

Extension (above grade level)

Ask advanced students to add a fifth panel showing groundwater, water that soaks into the ground instead of running straight into a river, and explain in one sentence how that panel fits into the sequence.

ELL supports

Pre-teach evaporation, condensation, and precipitation with simple gestures (arms rising for evaporation, arms coming together for condensation, fingers wiggling downward for precipitation) before assigning panels. Allow captions to be dictated in a student's home language alongside one English temporal word.

Extensions

Take the class outside on a sunny day after rain to look for a puddle that is shrinking, and connect the observation back to the mural's first panel, the sun warming water so it rises into the sky.