Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XXII · Unit 5: Rivers
22. The waterdrop's story: the water cycle
Goal: Your child retells the journey of a waterdrop from the sea, up to the clouds, down as rain, through the ground and the river, and back to the sea, and draws it as a circle.
You'll need
- The book open to the story
- A large sheet of paper and colored pencils
- Optional: a stuffed squirrel for the listener
- A geography notebook (any notebook kept just for these lessons) and a pencil
What's in the book
A story in which a raindrop tells a squirrel about its travels: rising from the sea as vapor, becoming a cloud, falling as rain on a field, sinking into the ground, coming out in a spring, tumbling down a mountain, over a waterfall, turning a mill-wheel, passing towns and cities, and returning to the sea. Sentences to copy summarize the water cycle.
The lesson, step by step
Set the scene
Read the opening aloud while your child looks at the picture.
Patter, patter, fall the raindrops on the brown leaves in the woods.
SayLet's listen to what the little waterdrop tells the squirrel.
Read the story
Read the story aloud, stopping now and then: Where was the drop's home? How did it get up into the sky? What made the drops heavy again?
Find earlier lessons in it
Ask your child to spot things from earlier lessons: vapor rising (Lesson XIV), the cloud (XVI), a spring (XVIII), the waterfall (XIX), the river reaching the sea.
Tell it back
Your child retells the story in their own words, in order, as if they were the waterdrop. Prompts: "My home is ... One day the sun ... Then we came to a mountain ... I fell on ... I went down into the ground ... Then ..."
Draw the circle
On a large sheet, your child draws the sea at the bottom, arrows going up to a cloud, the cloud over a mountain, rain falling, a river running back down to the sea. Label: sea, vapor, cloud, rain, river.
Write
Your child copies the book's sentences, or the first two:
The water rises from the sea in vapor.
The rain forms rivers, which flow back again into the sea.
Afterwards
Put the water-cycle drawing on the wall. When it rains, ask: "Where might this raindrop have come from?"
Tip
Today this round trip is called the water cycle. The book says it beautifully: the water is always going "round and round."
Answers to the book's problems
The waterdrop's home was the sea. The sun warmed it and it rose as vapor, became part of a cloud, was carried by wind to a mountain, grew cold and heavy, and fell as rain. It sank into the ground, came out again in a pool, ran down the mountain, fell over a waterfall, turned a mill-wheel, passed towns and cities, and returned to the sea. Water rises from the sea as vapor, forms clouds, falls as rain or snow, and flows back in rivers to the sea.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.