Lesson plan Kindergarten Science
Waiting for Warm Water at Quailwood School: A Cup Count Lesson
A 35-minute kindergarten lesson where the class catches the cold water that runs while a sink warms up, counts the cups it fills, and finds a use for it.
Objectives
- Students will predict and then count how many cups of water run out while a sink warms up.
- Students will explain that water going down the drain is used even when nobody touches it.
- Students will name one use for the water the class caught instead of losing it.
Vocabulary
Key words: waste, catch, cup, count, drain, warm
Teacher overview
Quailwood School is a fictional school, but the sink in this lesson is the real one in your classroom or the nearest staff room. Every time someone turns the tap toward warm and waits, cold water runs down the drain until the warm water arrives, and nobody sees how much because it leaves as fast as it comes. In this lesson the class catches that water in a pitcher instead, pours it into a line of identical cups, counts the cups, and then decides what to do with the water it just saved. The count will differ in every building, which is part of the point: the class measures its own sink rather than being told a number.
The misconception worth naming here is the kindergarten belief that water only counts as used when a person touches it, drinks it, or washes with it. Water running down an empty drain looks like nothing happening, so students rarely count it as water used. Expect predictions of one cup or two before the pour, and expect surprise at the line of full cups on the tray. Handle the tap yourself and keep the setting no hotter than warm, since students should be carrying the pitcher and the cups rather than working at the faucet.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Gather the class at the carpet and ask what happens when you turn a sink toward warm and the water is still cold. Ask where that cold water goes while a person waits. Take a hands-up prediction of how many cups it would fill, and record the three or four guesses on chart paper without saying whether any of them is close.
Catch the water (7 min): Move the class to the sink. Hold the clear pitcher under the tap, turn the water toward warm, and have the class watch the pitcher fill while everyone waits together. Stop the water as soon as it feels warm on your hand and say so out loud, so students know the wait is over and the catching is done. Carry the pitcher back to the table with the class following.
Pour and count (8 min): Set the tray on a table at student eye height and line up the empty cups on it. Let students take turns pouring from the pitcher into one cup at a time, filling each cup before starting the next. When the pitcher is empty, count the full cups together, touching each cup once as the class says its number, and write the final count on the chart beside the predictions.
Compare with the predictions (5 min): Read the recorded guesses back and ask whether the real count was more than the guesses, fewer, or the same. Have students show more with hands wide apart and fewer with hands close together. Ask two students to say what surprised them, and write their words on the chart.
Put the water to work (5 min): Pour the cups back into the watering can and let students water the classroom plants with it. As they pour, ask where this water would have gone if the pitcher had not been there, and let the class answer together that it would have gone down the drain.
Debrief and formative check (5 min): Go around the circle and ask each student to name one place the caught water could go instead of the drain, such as the plants, the paintbrush rinse bucket, or the class pet's bowl. If fewer than half the class can name a use, model two more out loud and repeat the question with the remaining students before dismissal.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Give these students the job of touching each cup during the count so the number words attach to something their hands are doing. Ask the comparison question in the fourth step one guess at a time, holding up the chart and pointing at a single number rather than at the whole list.
Extension
Ask these students to catch the waiting water at a second sink in the building the next morning and bring back the cup count, then say which sink lost more water and how they know. Have them draw a sign for the classroom sink showing the pitcher in place under the tap.
ELL supports
Pre-teach catch, cup, count, and drain by holding up each object and acting out the motion before the class leaves the carpet. Accept a pointed finger or a held-up number of fingers as a full answer during the count and the comparison, and provide the sentence frame "The water can go to the ___" with small drawings of a plant and a paint bucket beside it.
Extensions
Leave the pitcher under the classroom sink for a week and have a different pair of students empty it into the watering can each morning, keeping a tally on the chart of how many days the plants needed no tap water at all. Send a note home asking families to try the same catch at their kitchen sink once and to tell their child what they did with the water.