- chart paper
- marker
- Row, Row, Row Your Boat (book)
- block
- dam
- flow
- water
MA Standards:
Speaking and Listening/SL.PK.MA.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners during daily routines and play.
Language/L.PK.MA.6: Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, listening to books read aloud, activities, and play.
Head Start Outcomes:
Language Development/Receptive Language: Attends to language during conversations, songs, stories, or other learning experiences.
Language Development/Expressive Language: Uses language to express ideas and needs.
Logic and Reasoning/Reasoning and Problem Solving: Classifies, compares, and contrasts objects, events, and experiences.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Language 2: Participate actively in discussions, listen to the ideas of others, and ask and answer relevant questions.
Talk Together: Dams
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: You can change the direction water flows by digging paths or building walls and dams
ELA Focus Skills: Listening and Speaking, Vocabulary
Ask children to talk about what happens when they put things in water to block its flow. Ask, Which of the materials that you have used so far work best to block the flow of water? Introduce and talk about dams and damming with children. Say, A dam is something that blocks the flow of water. Have you ever seen a dam? People and animals can create dams on rivers and other bodies of water so that water doesn’t pass through. Ask children what they might use to build a tight dam that does not let any water pass through it. Record their ideas on chart paper.