Looking at Sugardoodle for this lesson, I love so many of the activity ideas! The eye droppers, balloons, rain maker, water colors... they all would be tons of fun. But, how do you make them meaningful? I'm sure that I could, but I've decided to go with bubbles, instead. By relating water to taking a bath, we can easily ask the question about what do we use with water to get ourselves clean? What happens when we add soap to water? What do we get? Bubbles! So blowing bubbles can remind us of how we use water to keep our bodies and homes clean.
It's so important to make everything we do meaningful, at least in some small way. I truly advocate for this! If we just give children a fun activity, they may have fun, but will they learn anything? Our stewardship is to teach, and I take this very seriously. But teaching, and learning, can be fun. We just need to make sure that we connect learning with fun in meaningful ways.
I also loved a craft activity I found on Sunbeam Printables! But, I liked the
the interactive craft from Sunday Savers better, so will use that.
But unfortunately, this is a subject that has fewer resources and ideas than most other lessons, so I didn't find much to draw on besides those listed on Sugardoodle. There are plenty of resources on water, the water cycle, etc. But, this lesson isn't really about teaching children about water, but rather, becoming aware of the uses of water to help us be more grateful for its creation.
We will start the lesson off with the Creation storybook by the Barefoot Teacher found on Teachers Pay Teachers ($1.75), that I introduced last week. I printed out the pages, but didn't bind them in any way. This way I could pull out the focus page(s) when the story was done and place them on the board. (For this week's lesson on water, I'm actually going to focus on Day 2, the creation of the 'firmament' or sky. The separation of the waters from the land is part of Day 3, but for Day 3 we will be focusing on the plants. But water - in the form of clouds - are part of the firmament.) We will repeat this each week for the Creation lessons until we've completed all of the pages. Reading the same story each week will create a concrete connection between the lessons and help the children better grasp the process of the Creation.
The activity selection is going to be done using raindrops. I cut out large raindrops from light blue construction paper, and wrote the different activities on the back. I will tape (or use magnets) the raindrops on the board, and the children will take turns selecting them.
- Where does water come from? I've made cards showing common sources of water, to talk about where we find water (river, lake, ocean, stream, rain, snow, puddles, clouds). I will let the children take turns picking a card, and naming what it shows.
- Song - "Fun to do" (as described in manual).
- What do we use water for? I've made cards showing common uses of water (brushing teeth, washing hands, watering plants, swimming pool, drinking water, boating, bath, cooking, washer & dryer, sprinkler, fishing, mopping). I will let the children take turns picking a card, and naming what it shows. Then discuss how we need water to live.
- Story of Moses - I will use the same visuals I used in Lesson 1, but I found another visual to show Moses getting water from the rock. I plan to review the story of Moses, but continue it to when he got the water out of the rock.
- Water is important to the Church - I have two pictures, one of baptism, and one of the sacrament, which I've cut into pieces. I will let the kids help me put them together (like a puzzle) to discover how water is important to the Church.
- Baptism -following the manual section "Water is important in the Church", I will show the two pictures and have the children talk about the similarities and differences with the pictures. Connected with this, I will give the interactive craft from Sunday Savers. As I've said before, the children love interactive handouts, and it's a great opportunity to engage the children in a meaningful review of lesson content.
- Song - "Rain is falling all around" - I will bring an umbrella and a spray bottle to use while we are singing. As we sing, I will mist the air with the spray bottle. If the children don't want to get wet, they can move under the umbrella.
- Bubbles - I got bubbles at the dollar store which we will use to blow bubbles, then each child can take theirs home. As we blow the bubbles, we will talk about how bubbles are made up of water and soap, and that we see bubbles whenever we use soap with water. Bubbles can remind us of how water helps us keep our bodies and our homes clean.
For coloring, I chose to do the black and white poster from Sunday Savers. This wasn't one of my favorites, but I didn't find anything I liked better. We will also be doing day 2 in the Emergent Reader version of the book by Barefoot Teacher ($2.50). I printed out a copy of the last version for each child last week. Last week we did the cover and day 1. Each week we'll do the appropriate page(s) until it is done.
So... how did it work out? Pretty much everything worked as I had hoped and planned. However, the first child to pick an activity picked the raindrop with the Bubbles on it. I really didn't want to start the lesson with this. So, I said we'd save that special raindrop for later. We actually just barely got through the rest of the activities, though, so instead of doing the bubbles in class, I sent them home with the children. They were very excited about this! I think this worked out great! Although I would have loved to have done them in class, it can be difficult to get their attention back after this type of activity and transition to a new activity.
This week I had a larger class than usual, with a couple somewhat inactive children. Those that do not come regularly have a much more difficult time staying on task and transitioning reverently, as they are not as familiar with the routine. So this is always a consideration. You have to carefully think about how different activities will go with different children, and be flexible to different options. This is one reason I didn't want to do the bubbles in the beginning. It's much better to establish a sense of reverence and control in the beginning of the class, and then allow for moments of activity and movement later in the class. This is even more important when there are children you know will have a difficult time transitioning back to reverence.
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