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Worksheet Grade 2 Art & Music

Warm and Cool Colors at Heronwick Lake: A Water Cycle Picture

Grade 2 students sort warm and cool colors, find solid and liquid water in a made-up lake scene, and choose colors, lines, and arrows for each part of the water cycle.

Objectives

  1. Students will sort colors into warm and cool groups.
  2. Students will identify solid water and liquid water in a described lake scene.
  3. Students will choose warm or cool colors, lines, and arrows to show each part of the water cycle.

Vocabulary

Cloud
A cloud is a visible mass of tiny water droplets or ice crystals floating in the sky. Clouds form when water vapor cools and condenses onto tiny particles of dust or salt in the air.

Also: warm colors, cool colors, solid, liquid, arrow

Teacher overview

Heronwick Lake is a made-up lake at the foot of a tall hill with snow on its top. The worksheet describes the scene in a short read-aloud, and students color a simple printed outline of it: the sun, the lake, a cloud, falling rain, and the snowy hilltop. Artists group colors by the feeling they give. Red, orange, and yellow are called warm colors because they remind people of sunlight and fire, while blue, green, and purple are called cool colors because they remind people of water, shade, and cold air. This sheet uses that idea as a real design tool: students decide which parts of the water cycle are warm and which are cold, and they color the picture to match, so the colors themselves carry part of the science story.

Plan for a common misconception about the part of the cycle no one can see. Many second graders believe that when a puddle dries up, the water is gone for good or has only soaked into the ground. They do not yet picture water rising into the air as an invisible gas. Item 9 addresses this through an art problem: if the rising water cannot be seen, how can a picture show it? Students usually invent wavy lines, dotted lines, or pale arrows, which is how many illustrators handle the same problem, and their answers give you a quick read on who understands that the water is still there.

Print the outline with the sun at the top left, the cloud at the top right over the lake, the hill on the right side with a snowy top, and the lake along the bottom. Leave empty space between the lake and the cloud for the arrows in items 9 and 10, and place a short color list above item 1. Students need crayons or colored pencils in all six colors named in item 1, plus white or gray.

Warm and Cool Colors at Heronwick Lake: A Water Cycle Picture — Grade 2 Art & Music
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read aloud: This is Heronwick Lake. The sun shines on the lake and warms the water. A little of the water goes up into the air. You cannot see it rise. High in the sky, the air is cold. The water makes a cloud. Then rain falls from the cloud back into the lake. On top of the tall hill, there is snow.

Warm colors are red, orange, and yellow. They make us think of the sun. Cool colors are blue, green, and purple. They make us think of water and cold air.

  1. Circle the warm colors: red, blue, yellow, purple, orange, green.
  2. Name one cool color.
  3. Look at the lake. Is the lake water solid or liquid?
  4. Look at the top of the hill. Is the snow solid or liquid?
  5. What warms the lake?
  6. You will color the sun. Should you use a warm color or a cool color?
  7. You will color the snow. Should you use warm colors or cool colors?
  8. The cloud is high up where the air is cold. Pick two colors for the cloud. Tell why you picked them.
  9. You cannot see the water that goes up into the air. How can you show it in your picture?
  10. Draw one arrow going up from the lake to the cloud. Draw one arrow going down from the cloud to the lake.
  11. In spring, the sun warms the hill. What will happen to the snow?
  12. Now color your picture. Use warm colors for the warm parts. Use cool colors for the cold parts.

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

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Red, yellow, and orange.
    All three must be circled and no others. A student who circles green has mixed up the two groups; point to the list at the top of the sheet.
  2. Answer: Blue, green, or purple.
    Accept any one of the three.
  3. Answer: Liquid.
    Lake water flows and takes the shape of the lake bed, so it is liquid.
  4. Answer: Solid.
    Snow is frozen water, so it is solid. Some students will answer "cold" instead; ask whether snow pours like water or keeps its shape.
  5. Answer: The sun
  6. Answer: A warm color.
    Yellow, orange, or red all work. Yellow with orange around the edge is a common choice.
  7. Answer: Cool colors.
    Snow can be white with light blue or light purple shadows. Accept white alone if the student explains that white looks cold, and use the moment to show how a little blue in the shadows makes snow look colder.
  8. Answer: Two cool colors, such as gray-blue and purple, because the cloud is where the air is cold.
    Accept gray or white as one of the two colors. The reason must connect the colors to the cold air or to the rain the cloud will make.
  9. Answer: Draw wavy lines, dotted lines, or pale arrows rising from the lake.
    Accept any light or broken mark that shows movement upward. A student who draws nothing, or who writes that the water is gone, holds the misconception described in the Overview; reread the sentence "A little of the water goes up into the air" together.
  10. Answer: An up arrow from the lake to the cloud and a down arrow from the cloud to the lake.
    The two arrows should form a loop between the lake and the cloud. Arrows placed on the hill or pointing sideways do not show this part of the cycle.
  11. Answer: The snow will melt into liquid water.
    Accept answers that say the snow turns to water or runs down the hill into the lake. Stronger answers name both the melting and where the water goes.
  12. Answer: A picture with a warm-colored sun and cool-colored snow, cloud, and rain.
    The lake can be blue or green. Some students color the top of the lake with a thin band of yellow or orange where the sun warms it, which is a thoughtful choice worth pointing out to the class.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students a color strip at the top of the page with a red, orange, and yellow square under the word warm and a blue, green, and purple square under the word cool, so items 1, 2, 6, and 7 become a matching task. Read each item aloud and accept oral answers that you record. For items 9 and 10, draw one dotted up arrow as a model, and let the student draw the down arrow.

Extension

Ask these students to color a second copy of the scene at night, when the sun is gone, and to decide which parts should change color and which should stay the same. They explain their plan in two sentences that use the words warm and cool. They can also add a small stream running from the melting snow into the lake and choose a color for it that shows it is cold water.

ELL supports

Hold up a crayon for each color word in item 1 and have students repeat the name, then sort the six crayons into a warm cup and a cool cup together. Use gestures for up, down, rise, and fall before items 9 and 10. Pre-teach solid and liquid with an ice cube and a cup of water, and accept a pointed finger or a drawn arrow in place of a written answer for items 3, 4, and 10.

Extensions

Pair this sheet with a short painting session in which students mix a warm color and a cool color to see what happens to each, such as adding a little blue to yellow. Hang the finished Heronwick Lake pictures beside the paintings and ask the class to point out where each artist put the warmest part of the picture and where the coldest part is. That conversation reviews the order of the water cycle, because the warm lake surface, the cold cloud, and the melting snow each sit at a different place in the loop.