Worksheet Kindergarten Art & Music
Painting the Sunbonnet Hill Water Tower: A Stripe Pattern Page
A kindergarten art worksheet where children color an eight-stripe pattern on a water tower tank, sort the stripes by color, and count each group.
Objectives
- Students will color an alternating two-color pattern across eight stripes.
- Students will sort the stripes by color and count how many are in each group.
- Students will compare two groups and say whether they are the same or which has more.
Vocabulary
Key words: stripe, pattern, tank, tower
Teacher overview
The fictional town of Sunbonnet Hill is repainting its water tower, and someone has to decide what goes on it. This page hands that decision to kindergartners in a form they can manage, which is a band of eight equal stripes wrapping the tank and a pattern rule to follow across them. Stripes are an easy first pattern because the shapes are already drawn and identical, so the child's whole attention goes to the alternation.
Print the page with a tall tower: a round tank at the top divided into eight stripes of equal width, four straight legs below it, and open space beside the tower for a house. The pattern rule is given in item 1 and the counts in items 2 and 3 depend on it, so check that first item before children move on. The big S in item 9 stands for Sunbonnet Hill.
Blue, white, and gray are the only colors needed. White stripes are simply left blank, which is worth saying out loud, since some children will try to color white over white.
Student Worksheet
Read each item out loud. Start with the tank at the top.
- The tank has 8 stripes. Make stripe 1 blue. Leave stripe 2 white. Keep going: blue, white, blue, white. What color is stripe 3?
- Count the blue stripes on the tank. How many are blue?
- Count the white stripes on the tank. How many are white?
- You have 4 blue stripes and 4 white stripes. Are the two groups the same?
- The tower has 4 legs. Make the legs gray. How many legs did you make gray?
- Draw 3 stars on the tank. How many stars did you draw?
- You have 4 blue stripes and 3 stars. Which group has more?
- The tower is tall. Draw a short house next to it. Which one is tall?
- Draw a big letter S on the tank. Is your S big or small?
- Tell one thing that makes the tower easy to see from far away.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Answer Key
- Answer: blue. The rule alternates blue and white starting with blue, so the odd stripes 1, 3, 5, and 7 are blue and the even stripes 2, 4, 6, and 8 are left white.
- Answer: 4 stripes. Stripes 1, 3, 5, and 7 are the blue ones, which is four stripes counted one at a time around the tank.
- Answer: 4 stripes. Stripes 2, 4, 6, and 8 are left white, which is also four.
- Answer: the same. Four blue stripes match one to one with four white stripes and no stripe is left over, so the two groups are equal.
- Answer: 4 legs. The printed tower stands on four legs and all four are colored gray.
- Answer: 3 stars. The item asks for three, so a child who drew two or four should recount and fix the drawing.
- Answer: the blue stripes. Matching each star to a blue stripe leaves one blue stripe with no partner, so four is more than three.
- Answer: the tower. The house is drawn short on purpose, and the tower rises above it, which is the point of the comparison.
- Answer: big. A letter on a tank is meant to be read from far away, so it should fill a good part of the space rather than sit small in a corner.
- Answer: It is tall. Accept any answer about height, about the tower standing above the houses and trees, or about the bright color and the big letter.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Print a version with stripes 1 and 2 already colored so the child continues an established pattern rather than starting one. Let the child put a blue counter on each blue stripe before counting, then slide the counters into a line to count them off the tank.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask the child to design a second tank using a blue, blue, white pattern across the same eight stripes, then count each color group and say which group has more. These children can also add the town name below the tank using beginning sounds.
ELL supports
Say the pattern chorally as a chant while pointing at each stripe, so the rhythm helps the child hold the rule in mind. Color words can be taught by holding the crayon up beside the stripe. Items 4, 7, and 8 can be answered by pointing at the correct group or shape.
Extensions
Show a photograph of a real water tower near the school, or a picture of any tank with a town name on it, and ask the class what the painter chose to put on it. Post the finished pages in one long row so the class can see how many different tanks eight stripes can produce.