Weather School / First Weather · ages 2 to 5

The weather rock beside a little rain stream running along a curb, with two leaves racing past in the water while rain still falls.

The Rain's Path

Where does the rain go when it is not in a puddle?

The weather rock outside under rain falling, waiting to be looked at.

The mission: guess first, then go look

Rain water is a traveler. Guess which way the water by your door will run: toward the street or away from it. Say your guess out loud.

Next time it rains, watch the water moving along the ground. It picked a direction, and it picks the same one every single time: whichever way is down.

When the rain lands, it does not sit still for long. It starts to travel.

Some of it waits in puddles. The rest is already on its way, running downhill.

Little trickles join together into bigger ones, and the big ones are headed for a river.

Professor Weather Rock in a graduation cap, pointing upward with a wooden pointer.

Professor Weather Rock says

Every big river on Earth started as little trickles, no bigger than the one in your gutter. Water only knows one direction, and it never once gets lost.

Rocktivity Time!

Pick a door. Every door is a good one.

Move like the weather

Be a trickle. Start up on your tiptoes, then slide slow and low across the floor, always toward the lowest spot in the room. If a pillow is in the way, go around it. Water never climbs over. It finds a way around, and it never, ever goes up.

Ask them

“Where do you think that water is off to in such a hurry?”

The Rocktivity

Pour a small cup of water at the top of the slide and guess where it will come out. Water rides the slide the same way you do, only quieter.

While the rain is falling, try this

Find the little stream running along the curb or under the gutter spout. Drop in two leaves and call the winner out loud before you let go, then race them. When the race ends, follow one trickle as far as your boots will take you. Where does it disappear?

Is the rock right?

You looked with your own eyes. The rock is outside looking too. Ask it what it sees, then decide together who read the sky better.

Words we learned

Tricklenounsay it: TRIK-ulA tiny, skinny stream of water, just getting started.

Downhilladverbsay it: down-HILLThe way water always goes: from up to down.

For the grown-up

Every trickle joins a bigger one: gutter to ditch, ditch to stream, stream to river, and on toward the sea. That whole family of joined-up water is called a watershed, and your street corner belongs to one. You never need the word out loud; following one trickle until it disappears is the entire lesson. Whatever they answer about where the water is hurrying to, ask what it might find when it gets there.

Take it off the screen

A colouring sheet with the big word to trace, plus the whole lesson in print. Free for any home or classroom.

Print the colouring sheet and lesson (PDF)

The trail continues

The water racing down your street fell out of the sky, and there is plenty more still up there. Next time rain and sunshine end up in the sky together, stop and look up.

Rainbows shows you what they build.