Resources Needed:
This lesson was developed and contributed by Holly Little.
This lesson is best following the lesson, Drop: An Adventure Through The Water Cycle (Introduction) when students have an understanding of the water cycle and states of water.
1. Book: Drop: An Adventure Through The Water Cycle by Emily Kate Moon
2. Instruments such as xylophones, keyboards, or recorders (optional)
Introduction:
1. Ask students to tell you what they remember about Drop’s journey. Draw their examples on the board (creating a visual diagram of the water cycle).
2. Label the parts of the water cycle (precipitation: raining down from clouds, collection: lake or pond, evaporation: evaporation up from the lake into the air, condensation: turning into clouds).
3. Depending on the age of your students, you can have students draw their own water cycle on a piece of paper, or you can hand out pre-copied illustrations of the water cycle.
Lesson:
1. Discuss the direction of movement for each of the parts of the water cycle (e.g. precipitation falling to the ground, evaporation rising up to the clouds). Ask students to demonstrate that movement with their bodies and their voices.
2. If you have instruments available, have students explore that movement using pitched instruments such as xylophones, keyboards, or recorders.
3. Using body percussion (sounds you can make with your body such as clapping, stomping, snapping, etc) recreate the sound of a rainstorm (starting with light rain: snapping and building to heavy rain: stomping). If you have instruments, you could add these into the soundscape.
4. Give students time to work on how they want to represent the water cycle using instruments and/or their voice. They will need to add sounds/music for each of the parts of the water cycle. Remind students to consider the directional movement of their sound as well as the feeling their sounds represent (e.g. quiet/calm evaporation, heavy rain).
Follow Up Activities:
1. As students present their water cycle music, discuss and reflect on the different ways students chose to represent the different parts. What was effective? What sounded realistic? What was your favourite representation that you saw/heard?
2. Students can share their soundscapes with a younger class to teach them about the water cycle.