Worksheet Grade 1 Health & Consumer Science
Rain Barrel or Kitchen Tap at Loganberry Cottage
A grade 1 health worksheet sorting seven household jobs into barrel water, tap water, or either, then counting and comparing the barrel and tap jobs.
Objectives
- Students will match a household job to barrel water, tap water, or either.
- Students will count and compare data in three categories.
- Students will give one reason why rain barrel water is not for drinking.
Vocabulary
- Rain barrel
- A rain barrel is a container that catches rainwater from a roof downspout so it can be used later to water plants. It saves drinking water and keeps some runoff out of the storm drains.
Also: tap, safe, either
Teacher overview
Loganberry Cottage is a made-up house with a rain barrel under the porch gutter and an ordinary kitchen tap inside. Rainwater collected off a roof carries dust, bird droppings, and bits of shingle, so it suits the tomato plants but should not be drunk, while the tap water is treated and tested and is safe for either use. This worksheet asks first graders to make that match seven times, then to count the barrel and tap jobs and compare them, which is the grade's data work. Read the page aloud item by item and let students answer with a word or a letter.
Student Worksheet
Read aloud: The Ott family lives at Loganberry Cottage. This family is made up. A rain barrel sits by the porch. It catches rain off the roof. The Otts use barrel water for their plants. That water is not safe to drink. The kitchen tap water is safe to drink.
Write B for barrel, T for tap, or E for either.
- Water the tomato plants.
- Fill a glass to drink.
- Make soup for lunch.
- Fill the cat's water bowl.
- Rinse mud off the porch.
- Wash muddy boots.
- Water the flower pots.
- How many jobs did you mark B?
- How many jobs did you mark T?
- How many more jobs did you mark T than B?
- Write one reason. Rain barrel water is not for drinking because ____.
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: B. The Otts use the barrel for plants, and plants do not mind the dust and bird droppings that wash off a roof, so barrel water is the right choice here.
- Answer: T. Water for drinking must come from the treated tap.
- Answer: T. Soup is eaten, so the water in it has to be safe to drink.
- Answer: T. A pet drinks its bowl water, so it needs tap water too.
- Answer: E. Rinsing a porch does not need drinking water, and either source works.
- Answer: E. Boots are washed outside, so barrel or tap water both do the job.
- Answer: B. Flower pots are like the tomato plants and do fine on barrel water.
- Answer: 2 jobs. Items 1 and 7 are the two B jobs.
- Answer: 3 jobs. Items 2, 3, and 4 are the three T jobs.
- Answer: 1 job. 3 T jobs minus 2 B jobs equals 1 more T job.
- Answer: Sample response: Rain barrel water is not for drinking because dirt from the roof washes into it. Accept any reason naming roof dirt, bird droppings, bugs, or that the water was never cleaned or tested.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Give these students three labeled cards, B, T, and E, and read one job at a time so they hold up a card before writing anything. Then have them count the held-up cards for items 8 and 9 rather than scanning back through the page.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask these students to add two jobs of their own to the list, mark each one, and explain the choice to a partner. They can also answer how many jobs in all were marked, which brings the third category into the total.
ELL supports
Pre-teach barrel, tap, roof, and safe with simple pictures, and post the three letters with a picture beside each one so a student who forgets the code can look up rather than ask. Accept a dictated reason for item 11 in the home language with one English word added during scribing.
Extensions
Set a clean jar outside during the next rain and a second jar of tap water beside it on the windowsill. After a day, have students look at both and describe what they see in each, then decide together which jar they would water a plant with and which they would not drink from. No one drinks from either jar during the activity.