Lesson plan Kindergarten Art & Music
Leaf Day on Skylark Court: A Torn-Paper Storm Drain Collage
A 40-minute kindergarten art lesson where children tear paper leaves for a two-panel collage showing a storm drain buried in leaves and the same drain raked clear.
Objectives
- Students will tear paper into leaf shapes without using scissors.
- Students will build a two-panel collage that shows a covered storm drain and a clear storm drain.
- Students will dictate or write one sentence naming a way to keep leaves off a storm drain.
Vocabulary
- Storm drain
- A storm drain is the grate at the edge of a street that swallows rainwater and sends it through pipes to the nearest creek or river. That water is usually not treated, so only rain belongs down the drain.
Also: grate, collage, tear
Teacher overview
Tearing paper is a legitimate technique with practical advantages for five-year-olds: it needs no scissors, it produces soft edges that look like leaves, and it builds the same pinch grip that handwriting needs. This lesson puts tearing to work on a scene many children have walked past, which is a storm drain at the curb with autumn leaves piled over the grate.
The collage has two panels on one folded sheet. The left panel shows the drain on Skylark Court buried under torn leaves, with rainwater backing up across the street. The right panel shows the same drain raked clear, with the rainwater going down through the grate. Putting both panels on one page lets children see the problem and the fix at the same time.
Tear a small pile of sample leaves before class. Children copy what they see, and a teacher pile gives them something to match.
Procedure
Minutes 0-7 - Looking at the curb. Read aloud: "Rain runs down the street. At the curb there is a hole with bars over it. That hole is a storm drain. The rain goes down the drain and out to the creek." Ask what would happen if leaves covered the bars. Collect three answers. Land on one sentence the class repeats together: when the drain is covered, the rain has nowhere to go.
Minutes 7-14 - Learning to tear. Show the pinch-and-pull motion with both hands close together, then tear one leaf shape slowly while children watch. Give every child two small squares of colored paper for practice. Coach the grip directly: thumbs on top, fingers underneath, small pulls rather than one long rip. Have everyone hold up a practice leaf before moving on.
Minutes 14-24 - The covered drain panel. Children open the folded white sheet and work on the left half. They glue a gray strip along the bottom for the street, add a gray square with black marker bars for the grate, then cover the grate with torn leaves. Last, they glue a wide blue shape spreading across the street to show rain that cannot get down. Say the reason out loud as they work, which is that the water has no way through.
Minutes 24-33 - The clear drain panel. Children work on the right half. Same street, same grate, but this time the torn leaves go in a neat pile to the side, away from the bars, and the blue paper goes in a narrow strip pointing straight into the grate. Ask each child to point to the leaves and say where the leaves are now. This is the formative check, and any child who puts the leaves back on the grate needs a short reteach at the sample collage before the closing circle.
Minutes 33-40 - Captions and circle. Scribe one dictated sentence under the right panel for each child, or let children who are ready write their own. Sentence starters that work well are "I will rake" and "The leaves go." Read four captions aloud in the closing circle and post the collages together as one long street.
Student Handout
No printed page is needed. Post this three-picture plan where children can see it while they work.
Left panel. Gray street strip along the bottom, gray grate square sitting on it, torn leaves piled over the bars, wide blue shape spreading sideways across the street.
Right panel. Gray street strip along the bottom, gray grate square sitting on it, torn leaves in a pile off to one side, narrow blue strip pointing down into the bars.
Caption line. One sentence under the right panel, dictated or written, naming what a person can do to keep the drain clear.
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)
Pre-cut the gray street strip and the grate square so the child spends the whole work time tearing and gluing leaves. Children who cannot yet tear a shape can tear strips instead, which still read as leaves once several are layered. Offer a glue stick rather than liquid glue to reduce mess and waiting.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask the child to add a third small panel on the back of the sheet showing where the rainwater goes after it leaves the drain, such as a pipe under the street and a creek at the end. Invite these children to write their own caption using the word because.
ELL supports
Pre-teach four words with objects in hand rather than pictures: leaf, drain, rake, and rain. Hold the paper grate up and run a finger through the bars while saying drain. The tearing step needs no language at all, which gives newcomers seven minutes of full participation without needing to speak. Accept captions in the home language and add the English word for rake during scribing.
Extensions
Walk the class outside to the nearest curb drain with clipboards and have children draw what they actually see on the grate that day. Keep children on the sidewalk, back from the street, with enough adults to watch every group. If the school grounds have no curb drain, a downspout and its splash block work the same way. Send one collage home with a note asking families to look at their own street after the next windy day.