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Worksheet Kindergarten Science

Rainy Day at Sparrow Elementary: A Storm Drain Sorting Worksheet

A kindergarten worksheet set at a fictional school whose playground floods after rain, where students sort surfaces and count which ones soak up water.

Objectives

  1. Students will ask a question about why the fictional Sparrow Elementary playground floods after rain.
  2. Students will sort pictures of surfaces into a soaks-in group and a runs-off group.
  3. Students will count each sorted group and compare which group has more.

Vocabulary

Storm drain
A storm drain is the grate at the edge of a street that swallows rainwater and sends it through pipes to the nearest creek or river. That water is usually not treated, so only rain belongs down the drain.

Also: soak, runoff, puddle

Teacher overview

At the fictional Sparrow Elementary, used for this worksheet, the blacktop part of the playground turns into a big puddle every time it rains hard, while the grassy part next to it barely puddles at all. This worksheet has students ask why that happens and sort pictures of playground surfaces into two groups: ones that let rain soak in, and ones that make rain run off into a puddle. Read every item aloud, since the goal is comparing and counting, not independent reading.

Show the class the two pictures of the playground first, the puddled blacktop and the dry grass, before starting the items, so students can point back to those two pictures as they sort. Print or sketch those two pictures, the five surface cards for item 3, and a row of 8 raindrops for item 6.

Rainy Day at Sparrow Elementary: A Storm Drain Sorting Worksheet — Kindergarten Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

  1. Look at the picture. The blacktop has a puddle. The grass does not. Why?
  2. A storm drain sits by the blacktop. What job does it do?
  3. Look at 5 cards: blacktop, grass, mulch, sidewalk, sandbox. Sort them into two groups. How many cards soak in?
  4. How many cards run off?
  5. Which group has more cards?
  6. Count the raindrops. There are 8 drops. Write the number.
  7. What if there was more grass and less blacktop? Would the playground flood more, or less?
  8. Leaves block the drain. The custodian clears 4 leaves. Does the puddle drain faster now?

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Rain soaks into the soft ground under the grass, but it cannot soak into the hard, solid blacktop, so it collects on top as a puddle instead. Accept any answer that names the blacktop as hard or solid compared to the grass.
  2. Answer: The storm drain carries the extra puddle water away from the playground so it does not stay flooded. Accept "it takes the water away" as full credit.
  3. Answer: 3 cards. Grass, mulch, and the sandbox all let water soak in (sand lets rain sink down into it the way beach sand does), so 3 cards belong in the "soaks in" group.
  4. Answer: 2 cards. Blacktop and sidewalk are hard, solid surfaces that make rain run off, so 2 cards belong in the "runs off" group.
  5. Answer: The "soaks in" group has more, 3 cards compared to 2 cards in the "runs off" group.
  6. Answer: 8 raindrops. Counting the raindrops one at a time in the picture gives a total of 8.
  7. Answer: Less flooding, because more grass and mulch would soak up more of the rain instead of letting it collect on hard blacktop. Accept any answer that connects more soft ground to less puddling.
  8. Answer: Faster. A storm drain that is not blocked by leaves can carry the puddle water away more quickly than one that is clogged.

Differentiation

Support

Before item 3, sort the first card (blacktop) together as a class model, saying out loud, "Blacktop is hard, so water runs off it and it goes in the runs off group." Provide the 5 picture cards as physical cutouts students can move into two labeled hoops or boxes instead of sorting on paper alone.

Extension

Ask students to think of one more surface at their own home or school (a driveway, a rug, a dirt path) and decide which group it belongs in, explaining why using the words "soaks in" or "runs off." For item 8, have students count how many total minutes they predict it would take the puddle to drain fully once the storm drain is clear, using a class guess-and-check chart.

ELL supports

Pre-teach soak, runoff, puddle, and storm drain using a simple picture pair (water disappearing into grass versus water pooling on blacktop) before starting the worksheet. Allow students to answer items 3 through 5 by physically moving picture cards into two groups rather than writing, and accept a one-word or pointing response for items 1, 2, 7, and 8.

Extensions

Take the class outside after the next rain (or use a hose to make a small puddle) to look at where water pools on the school's own blacktop and grass, connecting the worksheet's two surfaces to a real place students walk on every day. Pair this worksheet with a simple demonstration: pour a cup of water onto a paper towel and a cup of water onto a plastic tray, and let students see for themselves which surface soaks the water in.