Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XVIII · Unit 5: Rivers
18. How rivers are made
Goal: Your child traces how rain on the hills becomes a spring, a rill, a brook and a river, and names a river's source, mouth, bed, banks and tributaries.
You'll need
- A walk to a nearby brook, creek, river or drainage ditch with an adult
- A watering can and the sand tray (or a sloping patch of garden soil)
- Colored pencils
- A geography notebook (any notebook kept just for these lessons) and a pencil
What's in the book
The lesson asks about nearby brooks and rivers, then explains that rain on mountains runs off or sinks in and comes out again as a spring, the beginning of a river. From the spring flows a rill, rills join to make a brook or creek, and brooks join to make a river that flows to the ocean. Source, mouth, bed and banks are defined. Questions about a river near home, a picture to draw, and sentences to copy.
The lesson, step by step
Our own stream
Ask the book's first questions: Have you ever seen a brook or creek? A river? Is there one near here? Where does it begin? Where does its water come from? Where does it go?
Rain on the mountain
Read about rain falling on mountains. Pile damp sand into a mountain in the tray, then gently "rain" on it with a watering can.
SaySome water runs down the slopes. Some sinks into the ground.
The spring is the beginning of a river.
Rill, brook, river
Read about the rill, the brook and the river. Look at the book's picture of a river from its source to its mouth. Watch the little streams in the sand tray join into bigger ones.
New words
Go through the words, pointing to each in the sand tray: source (where it begins), mouth (where it flows into other water), bed (the land it flows over), banks (its two sides). As you face downstream, the right bank is on your right hand.
Visit a stream
With an adult, walk to a nearby brook, creek or river. Ask the book's questions there: Which way does it flow? Why that way? Does it wind about? Does it flow into another river? What grows on its banks? Which bank are we on?
Safety: an adult stays right beside children near water, and nobody wades in fast or deep water.
Draw
The book says:
Make a picture of a spring, and a brook flowing from it.
Your child draws the spring, the brook and the tall grass and plants near it.
Write
Your child copies one or two sentences from the book:
Water flowing out of the ground is called a spring.
The source of a river is where it begins.
The book also asks: write the names of all the rivers you have seen.
Afterwards
Look on a free online map for the stream or river nearest your home. Follow it with a finger to see where it goes: into a bigger river, a lake or the ocean?
Answers to the book's problems
Rain falls on hills and mountains. Some runs off down the slopes; some sinks into the ground and comes out again as a spring. A tiny stream from the spring is a rill; rills join to make a brook or creek; brooks join to make a river, which flows at last into the ocean (or into a lake or another river). The source is where a river begins, the mouth is where it flows into another body of water, the bed is the land it flows over, and the banks are its sides. A small stream flowing into a larger one is a tributary. A river flows downhill, from higher land to lower land. Questions about your own river will have your own answers.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.