RAINSTICKS!
EXTENDING THIS ACTIVITY FOR OLDER CHILDREN:
We took this valuable opportunity to brainstorm, in a constructivist fashion, the water cycle. We worked as a class to come up with the four steps (seen in the graphic below) for the water cycle, and related those to the word draught, and its implications for people dwelling in desert or plain environments.
Ask your school age child to reveal their prediction to you. Kids also took home drawings illustrating these predictions, and shared them around the tables before hearing the real end of the story. Along the way I encouraged the adding of detail, and critical thinking.
It's hard to believe that my plan for "Floating Bells" in the play yard was rained out YET AGAIN! Oh well, C'est la vie! I took it as an opportunity yet again to use the rain and our environment as a teachable, music moment! Today we explored two genuine cactus rainsticks and read the African Legend, "Bringing The Rain to Kapiti Plain". I used this book as a listening activity. Using two volunteers per page, children played the rain sticks by turning them upside down at any time they heard the word "rain". Younger children explored the instrument as well as rain poems, and our infant/toddler/two's classes also enjoyed a dog puppet with the Songbook "There were Ten In The Bed".
EXTENDING THIS ACTIVITY FOR OLDER CHILDREN:
How did I expound upon this lesson for older fours and schoolagers?
We took this valuable opportunity to brainstorm, in a constructivist fashion, the water cycle. We worked as a class to come up with the four steps (seen in the graphic below) for the water cycle, and related those to the word draught, and its implications for people dwelling in desert or plain environments.
I stopped halfway through "Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain" and asked children to draw and predict the ending to the story. How was a mere feather going to change the weather?
Ask your school age child to reveal their prediction to you. Kids also took home drawings illustrating these predictions, and shared them around the tables before hearing the real end of the story. Along the way I encouraged the adding of detail, and critical thinking.
Check out a wonderful reading of this book on Youtube by James Earl Jones!
Here's what the rain looked like today at Joyful Noise:
Check out the toddlers experimenting with the rain stick!