Classroom activity Kindergarten Art & Music

The Sweetgum School Rain Garden: A Texture Collage Station Rotation

Kindergartners rotate through four texture stations, picking rough, bendy, soft, and shiny pieces, then build a layered collage of a rain garden below a downspout.

Grade: Kindergarten
Subject: Art & Music
Material: Classroom activity
Time: 45 min
Prep: Moderate prep
Materials: Soil station: sandpaper squares, brown corrugated cardboard scraps, crumpled brown paper bag pieces, and a few cotton balls, Roots station: brown yarn, string, and brown pipe cleaners cut short, plus a few craft sticks, Plants station: green, purple, and yellow tissue paper, felt, and fabric scraps, plus a few sandpaper squares, Rain station: blue cellophane strips, aluminum foil strips, and blue ribbon, plus a few cardboard scraps, One sheet of heavy 9-by-12 inch paper per child, with a ground line across the middle and a gray downspout shape glued at the top corner, One paper lunch bag per child, with the child's name on it, Glue sticks, white school glue, and a cloth feely bag

Standards

K-ESS3-3 NGSS

Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.

How this material aligns: Each finished collage and its scribed sentence show the rain garden as a way to let roof rain soak into the ground, and debrief question 3 has children say where the same rain would go if the spot were blacktop, which names the runoff problem the garden solves.

All materials for K-ESS3-3 →

W.K.2 Common Core ELA

Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

How this material aligns: In step 8 each child dictates or writes one sentence under the collage that names the rain garden and tells one fact about it, such as where the roof rain goes.

All materials for W.K.2 →

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This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely, without attribution. Updated 2026-09-24.

Objectives

Students will describe materials by how they feel, using the words rough, soft, bendy, and smooth or shiny.
Students will choose a material for each part of a rain garden because its texture matches that part.
Students will build a layered collage that shows rain from a downspout soaking into soil where plant roots take it up.

Vocabulary

Rain garden: A rain garden is a shallow planted dip in the ground that catches rain running off a roof or driveway and lets it soak slowly into the soil. Its deep-rooted plants help clean the water.
Downspout: A downspout is the pipe that carries rainwater down from a roof's gutters to the ground. Where that water goes next, whether onto a lawn, into a rain barrel, or straight to a storm drain, makes a big difference in how much runoff a property sends downstream.

Also: texture, rough, soft, collage, soil, roots

Teacher overview

This is a four-station rotation for a class of 20 to 24 kindergartners, working in four groups of five or six. The scene is the rain garden at the fictional Sweetgum School: a shallow dip in the ground beside the front steps, planted with tall, deep-rooted plants, where the downspout from the school roof pours out when it rains. Roofs and blacktop do not soak up rain, so without the garden the roof water would run across the lot to the street drain, carrying dirt and litter with it. In the rain garden the water sinks into the soil and the plant roots take it up.

The art idea is texture, meaning how something feels and how it looks like it would feel. Each station stands for one layer of the rain garden and holds materials of one texture, so choosing the right piece at each station is the same as deciding what that part of the garden is like. Children collect one or two pieces at every station in a paper bag, then build the whole collage in order at their seats. Each station also holds one material that does not fit, such as cotton balls at the soil station, so that every child makes a real choice by touch.

A common misconception is that a rain garden is a small pond that stays full of water. It is a garden that holds water only for a short time after a storm and is dry most days, because the water soaks down into the soil. Children who glue a large pool of blue across the top of the soil are showing this misconception, and the debrief question about where the water goes is designed to draw it out.

Activity Directions

Before class, set up four tables and place a picture card from the Student Handout on each one. Put the soil materials on table 1, the roots materials on table 2, the plants materials on table 3, and the rain materials on table 4, each with its one mismatched material mixed in. Write each child's name on a paper lunch bag and set the prepared collage sheets aside for later.
Read-aloud introduction (5 minutes). Gather the class on the rug and read: "When rain falls on the roof of Sweetgum School, it runs into the gutter and down the downspout. At the bottom there is a rain garden. The rain soaks into the soil. The plant roots drink it. After the storm, the garden dries out again." Pass the feely bag, which holds one piece from each table, and have four children each reach in, touch one thing, and say a word for how it feels. Write rough, bendy, soft, and shiny on the board as they come up.
Rotation rule (2 minutes). Explain the rule in one sentence: at each table, touch everything, pick the pieces that feel like that part of the rain garden, and put them in your bag. Show one example at the soil table: rub the sandpaper and say it feels rough like dirt, then hold up a cotton ball and say it feels soft like a cloud, so it stays on the table.
Rotation (20 minutes). Send one group to each table. Each group spends 5 minutes at a table, then moves one table to the right when you ring a bell or clap. Circulate and ask each child at least once, "Why did you pick that one?" Listen for a texture word in the answer.
After four rounds every group has visited every table, and the rotation ends. Children return to their seats with full bags and receive their collage sheets.
Build the collage (10 minutes). Say the order aloud and model it on your own sheet as the children work: first the soil pieces below the ground line, then the roots going down into the soil, then the plants standing up above the ground line, and last the rain strips coming out of the downspout and pointing down into the plants and soil. The order matters because each layer sits on top of the one before it.
Formative check. As children finish, ask each one to put a finger on the downspout and trace where the rain goes. The target is a path that runs down into the soil and the roots. If more than a few children trace the water across the top of the garden and off the page, stop the class and trace the path together on your model before moving on.
Captions and debrief (8 minutes). Scribe one sentence under each collage, or let children who are ready write their own, such as "The rain garden drinks the roof rain." Then bring the class together, hold up two collages, and read the three debrief questions at the end of the Student Handout. The activity ends when every collage has all four layers and a sentence and the class has answered the third question.

The Sweetgum School Rain Garden: A Texture Collage Station Rotation — Kindergarten Art & Music

Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

Print these four picture cards, one per table, and read each one aloud as groups arrive.

Table 1, Soil. A picture of brown dirt with a hand touching it. The card reads: Soil feels rough and bumpy. Pick the pieces that feel like soil.

Table 2, Roots. A picture of a plant pulled up, with long roots hanging down. The card reads: Roots are long and bendy. Pick the pieces that can bend like roots.

Table 3, Plants. A picture of tall flowers and leaves. The card reads: Leaves and petals feel soft. Pick the pieces that feel like leaves.

Table 4, Rain. A picture of water pouring out of a downspout. The card reads: Rain is smooth and shiny. Pick the pieces that look like water.

Debrief questions. Read these aloud in step 8 while holding up two finished collages. They are keyed in the same order in the Answer Key.

Rain falls on the roof of Sweetgum School. Where does the rain go in our rain garden?
Look at your soil. Why did you pick that piece for the soil?
Think of the same spot covered in blacktop. Where would the rain go then?

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: Down into the soil, where the roots drink it.
Accept "into the dirt" or "the plants drink it." A child who says the water stays on top like a pond should look at a collage where the blue strips point down into the soil.
Answer: Because it feels rough, like soil.
Accept any texture word, such as rough, bumpy, or scratchy, or any answer that names how the piece feels or looks like it would feel. An answer about color alone, such as "because it is brown," is a good moment to ask the child to rub the piece and say how it feels.
Answer: It would run away across the blacktop toward the street drain.
Accept "it would run off" or "it would go to the drain." Accept "it would make a big puddle" as a partial answer and ask where the puddle would go next.

Differentiation

Support

Reduce each table to two materials, one that fits and one that does not, so the choice is a clear yes or no by touch. Pre-glue the soil layer on the collage sheet for children who find the build overwhelming, which leaves them three layers to add. Pair children who need help with a partner who can say the texture word first.

Extension

Ask the child to add a fifth layer of their own choosing, such as a worm in the soil or a rock at the edge of the garden, and to choose a material for it by texture and explain the choice. Children ready for more can make a second, smaller collage of the same spot as blacktop, with the rain running sideways off the page, and hold the two side by side.

ELL supports

Teach the four texture words with the feely bag before the rotation, pairing each word with a hand motion: rubbing fingertips for rough, bending a finger for bendy, stroking the cheek for soft, and wiggling fingers for shiny rain. Children can answer the station question by showing the motion. Accept captions in the home language and add the English words rain garden while scribing.

Extensions

After the next rain, take the class to look at a downspout on the school building and follow where its water goes. If the school has a planted area or a grassy low spot, compare it with the collage. Children can also make rubbings of real textures around the schoolyard, such as bark, a brick, and a leaf, and decide which rubbing would work best for each layer of a rain garden.