The Rain: Real or Make Believe?

Grade Level: PK - 1st.
Classroom time: 1 - 45 min period.

Skills Addressed

ELA skill: compare/ contrast
ELA Skill: Share own work and communicate ideas.
ELA Skill: Real vs. “make believe”
Science Skill: Weather; water cycle
Visual Arts skill: Art History, Surrealism
Math: graphing/grouping

Process:

Teacher will introduce the concept of rain during calendar activities and by reading one of the following suggested books:

Little Cloud, by Eric Carle
Rain songs, by Leslie Evans
Listen to the rain, by Bill Martin

Students will act out how rain is formed through movements while singing a song like: “Listen to the raindrops”, or “Raindrops are falling on my head”.
Go to www.unitedstreaming.com , and search: Peep and the Big Wide World: Stormy weather/Peep in Rabbitland.
The teacher will ask the students: “Have you ever seen rain made from something other than water? Do you think it is possible? Let me read you a story of a special place where the rain was not made out of water.” Read “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”, by Judy Barrett. Ask the students: “Do you think that could happen?”
Show Magritte’s “Golconde” to the students

http://www.steugene.pvt.k12.wi.us/artist/margritte2/Golconde.html
http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Java/golconde.html

Ask the students: “What do you see in this picture? What is the rain in this picture? Could people fall from the sky? If you could create a special “rain” for a day….What would you like to rain?”

Let the students create their own pictures of rain and dictate/write what their rain is made of.
While the students work in their tables, the teacher could take pictures of the students movements from step 2 modeling after Magritte’s “Golconde” and use this to create a class book or mural.
Go to http://www.storyboards-east.com/storybrd.htm and ask the students “What would you do if it started raining M&M’s?”
Create a compare and contrast chart. How is our “Rain” similar and different?
Make a graph: How many imagined the rain to be…(food, animals, toys, etc.)
Create a class book using the pictures (example below: “It’s raining students”)

Picture Book

Objectives:
National Language Arts Standards:

Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment.
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.

National Visual Arts Standards:

Choosing and evaluating a range of subject matter, symbols, and ideas.

Reflecting upon and assessing the characteristics and merits of their work and the work of others.

Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines.

Lesson created by Silvia Romano, bilingual PreKindergarten teacher at Ketelsen Elementary in Houston, Texas.

The mission of Project GRAD is to ensure a quality public education for all students in economically disadvantaged communities so that high school and college graduation rates increase.