Lesson plan Kindergarten Science
Birchwood Puddle Watch: Counting Rainy and Sunny Days
A 30-minute kindergarten science lesson where students trace a shrinking schoolyard puddle and count two weeks of rainy versus sunny days on a class weather chart.
Objectives
- Students will observe a puddle and describe how its size changes over the course of the school day.
- Students will count the rainy-day marks and the sunny-day marks on two weeks of a class weather chart.
- Students will compare the two counts and tell which kind of day happened more often.
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.
- Evaporation
- Evaporation happens when liquid water, often warmed by the sun, turns into an invisible gas called water vapor that rises into the air. It is how water leaves oceans, lakes, and puddles.
- Precipitation
- Precipitation is any water that falls from clouds to the ground, including rain, snow, sleet, and hail. It is the main way water returns from the sky to the surface of the Earth.
Teacher overview
At Birchwood Elementary, the class has kept a simple weather chart for the past two school weeks, marking each day with a sun sticker or a raindrop sticker. This lesson uses that chart as a counting task and pairs it with a live puddle demonstration, so students both count real classroom data and watch water disappear in front of them. A common misconception this lesson addresses is that a puddle's water simply vanishes; the chalk-outline demonstration lets students see the puddle shrink over the day, which sets up the idea that the water rose into the air instead of disappearing.
Keep the demonstration low-stakes: if it has not rained recently, a poured tray of water traced with chalk works just as well as a real puddle, since the point is watching a wet area shrink, not waiting for weather. The two-week chart should already exist as a daily one-minute routine before this lesson; today's session is the day the class stops to count it.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Take the class outside, or to a window, to look at the sky and mark today's weather on the chart with a sun or raindrop sticker. If there is a puddle on the playground, trace its outline with chalk and ask, "What do you think this puddle will look like by the end of the day?" Collect two or three guesses without correcting them.
Direct instruction (8 min): If there is no real puddle, pour a shallow tray of water on dry pavement and trace its outline instead. Explain simply: the sun warms the water, and tiny, invisible bits of it rise up into the air. Introduce the word evaporation for this rising, cloud for where those tiny bits gather high in the sky, and precipitation for when the cloud lets the water fall back down as rain. Tell the class they will check the traced puddle again at the end of the school day.
Guided practice (10 min): Gather in front of the two-week weather chart. Point to each sun sticker and each raindrop sticker while the whole class counts aloud, moving one button counter into a "sunny" cup for every sun and one button counter into a "rainy" cup for every raindrop. When both cups are filled, ask the class to compare: which cup has more buttons? Model saying the comparison as a full sentence: "We had more sunny days than rainy days" (or the reverse, depending on the real chart).
Independent practice (5 min): Each student draws a two-panel picture of the traced puddle: "Puddle in the morning" and "Puddle later," showing it smaller in the second panel. Students who finish early add a sun with lines showing it warming the puddle.
Closure / exit ticket (2 min, at the end of the school day): Walk back to the traced puddle outline (or the poured puddle) and check it against the chalk line. Ask the class to show thumbs-up if they think the water evaporated into the air and thumbs-down if they think it simply vanished with nothing happening; discuss briefly. A strong closing threshold is most of the class showing thumbs-up for evaporation before dismissal.
Student Handout
Answer these three questions with your class.
- Suppose the two-week chart shows 4 rainy-day marks and 6 sunny-day marks out of the 10 school days recorded. Which kind of day happened more often, and by how many days?
- Look at the chalk line around the puddle at the end of the day. Is the puddle bigger or smaller than it was in the morning, and why?
- Exit ticket. Where does the water from the puddle go?
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: 2 days; sunny days happened more often, by 2 days
Counting each column gives 4 and 6, and comparing them shows 6 is greater than 4, so sunny days happened more, by 2 days (6 − 4 = 2). If your own class chart shows different numbers, have students count and compare those instead using the same method.
Answer: Smaller
The puddle should look smaller in the traced outline by the end of the day, because some of its water evaporated into the air as invisible water vapor rather than disappearing with no explanation.
Answer: Into the air
Water evaporates; it rises into the air as tiny invisible bits rather than simply vanishing. Accept "it goes into the air" or "it goes up to the clouds" as a full-credit kindergarten answer.
Differentiation
Support (below grade level)
Pre-fill the sunny and rainy counting cups partway and have students finish moving the remaining buttons, rather than starting the count from zero. For the two-panel drawing, provide a pre-drawn puddle outline in both panels so the student only needs to size the second one smaller and add color.
Extension (above grade level)
Ask students to predict how the traced puddle would look different on a windy day versus a still day, and explain their prediction using the word evaporation. Challenge confident counters to also count how many days were neither fully sunny nor fully rainy (cloudy days), if the chart includes that option, and compare all three counts.
ELL supports
Pre-teach cloud, evaporation, and precipitation with simple gestures: fingers wiggling upward for evaporation, hands forming a puffy shape overhead for cloud, and fingers fluttering downward for precipitation. Model the comparison sentence frame "We had more ___ days than ___ days" and have partners repeat it together before individual students attempt it.
Extensions
Keep a rain gauge (even a marked clear cup) outside for a month and add a third counting column to the weather chart for "how many lines of rain" collected on rainy days, extending the counting-and-comparing skill this lesson builds. Many local water utilities are willing to answer a simple class question by letter, such as "where does the rain that falls on our school eventually go?", which connects the puddle demonstration to the town's real water system.