Lesson plan Kindergarten Social Studies & Civics
Carrying Water in Hollow Rock Long Ago: A Kindergarten Lesson
A 30-minute kindergarten lesson where children carry a pail across the room, sort long-ago and today water pictures, and label one town improvement.
Objectives
- Students will tell one way people in a town got water before there were pipes.
- Students will sort picture cards into a long-ago group and a today group.
- Students will draw one change that made getting water easier and label it by dictating or writing.
Vocabulary
- Pump
- A pump is a machine that adds energy to water to move it or push it uphill, doing the job gravity cannot do on its own. Water systems use many different kinds of pumps to move water from wells, through treatment, and out to customers.
Also: long ago, today, well, pipe, tap
Teacher overview
Historical change is easiest for kindergartners to take in through physical work, so this lesson has children carry a pail of water before it shows them any pictures. The scenario is the town of Hollow Rock, a made-up town where families once pulled water up from a well in the yard and carried it inside one pail at a time. Once children have felt how heavy and how slow that is, the picture sort and the drawing give them language for what changed and who changed it.
Fill the pail only about one-third full and carry it yourself first so the class sees a safe, slow walk. A single spill is fine and even useful, since spilling is part of why people wanted taps indoors. Keep a towel on the floor by the tub and wipe up spills right away.
Some families today still get water from a well or carry it home. If a child says so, treat it as a real way people get water now rather than as something from long ago.
Procedure
Opening read-aloud (5 min): Gather the class on the rug with the empty pail in your lap. Read aloud: "Long ago, in the town of Hollow Rock, no water came out of the wall. Every drop came from a well in the yard. A rope went down. A pail came up. Then someone carried it inside." Ask two questions and take a few answers each: "Who in your house would have carried the pail?" and "How many trips would it take to fill a bathtub?" Accept any answer to the second question and write three of the guesses on chart paper without correcting them.
The pail walk (8 min): Pour water into the pail until it is about one-third full. Have children line up and take turns carrying the pail from the tub, around a cone or chair, and back, while the rest of the class counts the steps out loud. One trip per child is plenty. Then ask what their arm felt like and what would happen if they had to do that ten more times before breakfast. Introduce the words long ago and today here, and post them at the top of two columns on the chart paper.
Long ago and today sort (9 min): Show the picture cards one at a time (see the handout section). For each card, the class votes with a quiet hand signal for the long-ago column or the today column, then one child tapes the card up and says one word about it. When a card causes disagreement, such as the hand pump, let two children speak for each column before you place it in the middle and explain that it belongs to both. Close the sort by tracing the change with your finger: a well in the yard, then a pump on the corner, then a pipe under the street, then a tap in the kitchen. Say plainly that people dug those pipes on purpose so that nobody would have to carry a pail.
Draw and label (6 min): Each child folds a paper in half, draws a person carrying a pail on one side and one thing from the today column on the other, then dictates or writes a label for the today side. Circulate and scribe labels for children who dictate. Sample labels sound like "the tap gives us water" or "the pipe goes under the road."
Closing check (2 min): Hold up the pail and ask the whole class one formative question: "Did water get easier or harder to get in Hollow Rock?" Watch for the hand signal for easier from most of the class, then call on two children to say why. Any child who signals harder gets a quick follow-up question tomorrow at morning meeting.
Student Handout
There is no printed page for children at this age. The product is the drawn and labeled paper and the class chart. Prepare eight picture cards by sketching them on index cards or printing simple clip art. Sketches on the board work as well as printed cards.
- A rope and pail going down into a stone well
- A child carrying a full pail with both hands
- A metal hand pump on a street corner
- A person filling a barrel on a wagon
- A crew digging a trench in the road for a pipe
- A kitchen tap running into a glass
- A drinking fountain in a school hallway
- A bathtub filling from a spout
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Pair the pail walk with a partner carry so that two children hold the handle together, and give those children a two-card sort (the stone well and the kitchen tap) before they join the full eight-card sort. For the drawing, offer a page already folded and marked with a small dot on each side to show where to begin.
Extension
Ask confident children to place the hand pump card themselves and explain in one sentence why it sits between the two columns. During the drawing step, challenge them to add a third picture showing the pipe under the street and to dictate a label that uses the word before or after.
ELL supports
Pre-teach pail, pump, pipe, and tap with the real object or a gesture the whole class copies, such as a cranking motion for the pump. The hand-signal vote keeps the sort language-light by design. Accept dictated labels in a child's home language and add the English word together while you scribe.
Extensions
Invite a family member or an older neighbor to visit and tell the class how they got water as a child, especially anyone who grew up with a hand pump, a cistern, or a spring house. Send home a half-sheet asking families to find the oldest water thing in their house and draw it, then start the next morning meeting with those drawings.