SUNY CANTON Early Childhood Program

Activity Idea / Lesson Plan

Name: Aine McMorrow

Classroom Theme: Water

Implementation Date: 3/26/2018

Start of Lesson Plan: 15 minutes

Age Group: Kindergarten

Focus Area: Science

Title of Lesson: Make it rain

Concept Statement: The children will enhance scientific knowledge by engaging in the rain experiment and
story.

Objective One
HESOLF Domain: Cognition
Sub-Domain: Reasoning and problem solving.
Goal Code: P-SCI 5
Goal: Child plans and conducts investigations and experiments.
Objective One: The children will gain an understanding of scientific reasoning by conducting the rain
experiment in groups.

Objective Two
HESOLF Domain: Cognition
Sub-Domain: Reasoning and problem solving.
Goal Code: P-SCI 4.
Goal: Child asks a question, gathers information, and makes predictions.
Objective Two: The children will develop an understanding of how it rains by engaging in the story “Down
Comes the Rain”.

Objective Three
HESOLF Domain: Cognition
Sub-Domain: Scientific inquiry
Goal Code: P-SCI 1.
Goal: Child engages in scientific talk.
Objective Three: The children will enhance their scientific vocabulary by predicting the results of the
experiment.

Materials
1.Shaving cream
2. 4 cups
3. Water
4. 8 pipettes
 5. Blue food coloring
6. The book “Down Comes the Rain” by Franklyn M Branley

Directions/Steps/Process
Motivation
I will come in wearing a raincoat with an umbrella.
Steps
1. I will ask the children questions about rain to begin. For example, do you like rain? How does it
feel when it rains? What must be wear when it rains? Where does the rain come from? Why do
you think it rains sometimes? What does the clouds look like before it rains?
2. I will then read the book “Down Comes the Rain” by Franklyn M. Branley.
3. I will then divide the children into groups where they will conduct their experiments. I will ask
each child to make a prediction of what they think it going to happen.
4. I will hand each group a jar, some shaving cream, water, pipette, and blue food coloring. I will
conduct an example experiment to show the children what they will be doing. They will add
some water to their cup first. After they will add some shaving cream along the top that will act
as the “clouds”. They will all receive a turn of adding some blue food coloring drops to the clouds
using a pipette. This will create an image as if it is raining.
5. After the experiment is over I will give each child a worksheet. On this worksheet it will allow
the children to reflect on everything they did for example, First we added the ….. Next we
dropped tiny….. Then, the droplets combined to form…. Last the raindrops fell down as……
They will all write and draw a picture of their experiment.

Conclusion
To conclude we will do a rain dance.

Transition
I will transition them to the next activity pulling out lollypop sticks with their name and asking them
to line up one by one.

Supplemental Materials