Worksheet Kindergarten Science
From Clearwater Hill to Our Tap: A Kindergarten Water Path Worksheet
A kindergarten science worksheet where students trace and count the steps of a fictional reservoir's water path to the tap, from Clearwater Hill to a kitchen sink.
Objectives
- Students will name, in order, the stops water makes on its way from a reservoir to a tap.
- Students will count objects arranged in a picture, up to ten, and record the count.
- Students will explain in their own words why a water tower is built tall.
Vocabulary
- Reservoir
- A human-made lake, usually created by a dam, that stores water for later. Reservoirs supply cities and farms and help control floods.
Also: pipe, tower, tap
Teacher overview
This worksheet follows one drop of water on its trip from Clearwater Hill Reservoir, a fictional reservoir used for this worksheet, to a kitchen tap. Before students touch the page, read the four stops aloud together while pointing to a simple drawn map: the reservoir on the hill, a treatment building, a tall water tower, and a row of houses. Every counting item on this page stays within ten objects, matching what kindergartners are ready to count and record, and every item can be answered by pointing, circling, or writing a single numeral rather than a full sentence.
Read each item aloud before students begin, and model the first counting item together so the class sees exactly what "count the pipes" or "count the houses" means before working alone. Before copying, draw the map across the top of the page: the reservoir on a hill with a line of 6 raindrops falling toward it, a treatment building with 3 round tanks, a tall water tower with 7 pipes coming out of it (color 4 pipes blue and leave 3 gray), and a row of 7 houses, one at the end of each pipe.
Student Worksheet
- Look at the map. Point to each stop in order. Which stop comes first?
- Count the pipes at the tower. Write the number.
- Each pipe goes to one house. How many houses get water?
- Count the raindrops in the line. Write the number.
- The tanks clean the water. Circle them. Write how many.
- The tower stands very high. Why is it built so tall?
- Does the water need a push? Or does it flow down on its own?
- Look at the 7 pipes. 4 pipes are blue. The rest are gray. How many pipes are gray?
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: The reservoir on the hill. Water always starts at the reservoir before it travels to the treatment building, the tower, and finally the houses.
- Answer: 7 pipes. Counting each pipe drawn coming out of the tower gives a total of 7.
- Answer: 7 houses. Since each of the 7 pipes from problem 2 goes to one house, the count of houses matches the count of pipes.
- Answer: 6 raindrops. Counting the raindrops one at a time along the line gives a total of 6.
- Answer: 3 tanks. The picture shows 3 round tanks at the treatment building, and circling each one and counting gives 3.
- Answer: Being built high up lets gravity pull the water back down through the pipes to every house, so the water can flow to the houses on its own instead of needing a machine pushing the whole time. Accept any answer that connects the tower's height to water flowing downhill.
- Answer: It flows down on its own. Gravity pulls the water down through the pipes from the high tower. Accept "on its own," "gravity," or a description of water flowing downhill by itself.
- Answer: 3 gray pipes. Out of 7 total pipes, 4 are colored blue, so 7 − 4 = 3 pipes remain gray.
Differentiation
Support
For items 2 through 5 and 8, provide physical counters (buttons or cubes) that students can place directly onto a printed copy of the picture and move one at a time while counting aloud. For items 6 and 7, offer a simpler starter question first: "Does water go up a hill by itself, or does it need help?"
Extension
Ask students to draw a fifth stop that could come after the houses, such as water going down a drain, and explain in one sentence where they think it goes next. For item 8, have students also figure out how many pipes would be gray if only 2 of the 7 pipes were colored blue instead.
ELL supports
Pre-teach reservoir, pipe, tower, and tap using a labeled picture of the four stops, pointing to each one as the word is introduced. Allow students to answer items 1, 6, and 7 by pointing to a picture or using a hand gesture (a downward sweep for "water flows down") instead of speaking in a full sentence.
Extensions
Build a simple tabletop model using a paper cup taped to the top of a stack of blocks with a straw poked through the bottom as the "pipe," and let students pour water in at the top to watch it travel down and out, connecting the worksheet's picture to something they can see move with their own eyes. If a water tower or standpipe is visible from the school, take the class outside to look at it and count how many legs or supports hold it up.