Lesson plan Kindergarten Art & Music
Linnet Lane Sky Squares: Two Weeks of Painted Rain and Cloud Days
Over ten school days kindergartners paint one sky square a day using a shared color and mark code, then sort the squares to find a pattern in the rainy and cloudy days.
Objectives
- Students will choose colors and marks to show the sky they see on a given day, including how much of it is covered by cloud.
- Students will use a shared code of short lines to show rain and a yellow circle to show the sun.
- Students will sort ten painted squares into rainy, cloudy, and sunny groups, count each group, and describe a pattern.
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: sky, rain, weather, pattern, code
Teacher overview
Each child in a kindergarten class at the fictional Linnet Lane School keeps a sky strip: a long paper strip folded into ten squares, one for each school day across two weeks. Every day the child looks at the real sky and paints one square to match it, using a sky code the class learns on the first day. Blue paint shows open sky, gray paint shows cloud, short crayon lines show rain, and a yellow circle shows the sun when it is out. On the tenth day the children read their strips as a record of the weather and look for a pattern. Rain is the part of the water cycle that kindergartners can watch directly, and this lesson has them record which days it fell and the clouds it fell from.
The art decision that matters most is how much of the square to cover with gray. A day with a few clouds gets a blue square with a small gray shape or two, and a heavily overcast day gets a square that is gray from edge to edge. Children are deciding with a brush how cloudy the day was, which is a visual judgment rather than a single yes or no.
Two misconceptions are addressed. The first is an art habit: many kindergartners paint the same sky every time, a blue band across the top and a yellow sun in the corner, whatever the weather outside. The daily step of looking out the window before painting, and the question "Is the sun out right now?", is there to break that habit. The second is a science misconception: children often assume that every gray, cloudy day is a rainy day. Most two-week records show several gray days with no rain, and the session 10 discussion is built to bring that out, along with the related idea that rain falls only on days with clouds.
Run the lesson during a season when the local weather changes from day to day. If all ten days turn out the same, that is itself a pattern the class can describe.
Procedure
Session 1, hook (5 min): Take the class to the window or just outside the door. Ask, "What color is the sky right now? Can you see clouds? Is the sun out?" Collect several answers. Remind children never to look straight at the sun. Tell the class they will paint the sky every day for two weeks and then look back at all their paintings together.
Session 1, teaching the sky code (10 min): Post the Sky Code Card from the Student Handout and paint three sample squares in front of the class while explaining each choice aloud. The first is a sunny day, painted all blue with a yellow crayon sun. The second is a cloudy day, painted mostly gray with a small patch of blue. The third is a rainy day, painted all gray, with short blue crayon lines drawn down across it once the paint is dry. Point out that on the rainy square the lines come down out of the gray, because rain falls from clouds.
Session 1, first square (12 min): Children look out the window again, then paint the first square on their strips. Remind them to paint the sky they see, not the sky they usually draw. Let squares dry before any crayon marks are added.
Session 1, check for understanding (3 min): Hold up your three sample squares one at a time and ask children to show with their fingers which one matches today: one finger for sunny, two for cloudy, three for rainy. If fewer than about three quarters of the class agree, go back to the window together and talk through what everyone sees before the paintings are put away.
Sessions 2 through 9, the daily square (10 min each, 80 min total): Each day at about the same time, children spend 2 minutes looking at the sky, 6 minutes painting the next square and adding any crayon marks, and 2 minutes with a partner, taking turns to point at the new square and say one sentence about it, such as "Today was gray with rain." On the first rainy day, remind the class that the rain lines go on top of gray.
Session 10, the last square (8 min): Children paint the tenth square as usual. While the paint dries, draw three columns on chart paper headed with a small painted example of each group: rainy, cloudy with no rain, and sunny.
Session 10, sorting and counting (10 min): Children lay their strips flat. Point to each column in turn and ask children to put a finger on each square on their strip that belongs in it and count aloud. A rainy square is any square with rain lines, a cloudy square is mostly gray with no lines, and a sunny square is mostly blue. Make a class tally for each column using one child's strip as the reference, and ask which group has the most squares and which has the fewest.
Session 10, describing the pattern (7 min): Ask three questions and take several answers to each. "Was every gray day a rainy day?" "Did it ever rain on a day with a blue sky?" "What do you think the sky will look like tomorrow, and why?" If a strip shows rain lines on a square with some blue in it, point out that the rain still fell from a cloud, even though part of the sky was clear. Scribe one sentence under each strip, such as "Most of our days were cloudy" or "It rained on gray days." Post the strips side by side on a wall so the class can see that everyone painted the same weather in different ways.
Student Handout
Print this Sky Code Card at poster size and hang it next to the window for all ten days. Each part has a small painted example beside it.
Blue sky. Paint blue where you see open sky.
Clouds. Paint gray where you see clouds. More clouds means more gray.
Rain. When it rains, draw short blue lines coming down from the gray. Draw them after the paint is dry.
Sun. If you can see the sun, draw a yellow circle. If you cannot see it, leave it out.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Give children who find the daily choice overwhelming a small card showing the three sample squares from session 1, and let them point to the one that matches the sky before they paint. They can then copy that square, adjusting the amount of gray if they are ready. Pre-fold and number the squares on the strip so the child always knows where the next painting goes.
Extension
Add two more marks to the code for children who are ready: short slanted lines for a windy day and white dots on gray for snow, which is frozen water falling from clouds. Ask these children to find the longest run of days in a row with the same weather on their strip and to tell the class about it.
ELL supports
Teach the weather words with the three sample squares and a gesture for each: a hand shading the eyes for sunny, hands overhead in a round cloud shape for cloudy, and fingers wiggling downward for rain. During the daily partner talk, provide the frame "Today was ___." and accept a single word or a gesture. Children can take part fully in the sorting by pointing and counting in any language.
Extensions
Put a clear plastic cup outside on a rainy day during the two weeks and bring it in to show the rain that the lines on the squares stand for; the water is for looking at, not drinking. At the end of the lesson, children can choose their favorite square and paint it again at a much larger size, keeping the same colors and marks, for a hallway display of the two weeks of Linnet Lane weather.