Materials:

• Waters, by Edith Newlin Chase (Northwind Press, 1993, ISBN: 0590742027)
• Blue water-soluble paint, thick, watercolour paper, brushes
• Empty yogurt containers for mixing water and paint

1. Show the cover of Waters, by Edith Newlin Chase.  Ask the students to brainstorm for verbs that describe the movement of water.  Explain that the book will have many such words, all of them ending in –ing...  
    
   
2. While reading, pause to ask students about the meaning of the verbs.  What do they say about the river?  Note that these verbs describe the changes happening to the stream (it gets bigger as it flows downhill).
   
   
3. Show the list of verbs from the story (Sprinkling, Twinkling, Running, Sunning, Dashing, Splashing, Flowing, Growing, Rolling, Tossing).  If shown out of order, they can be matched by the students according to their rhymes, then written down in increasing order, from brook to ocean.

Application:

1. Briefly review how rivers grow: they flow downhill and merge with other rivers.  Show a completed example of a “drip” painting and explain how to make one.  A few dabs of paint are placed on the top of the paper with a brush, and then the paint drops stream downwards as you tilt the paper. 
   
   
2. Ask the children what this pattern reminds them of.  It could be the map of a river’s course, or, if turned upside down, a set of leafless trees.  Encourage the children to make their own drip patterns and to draw additional details on the paper in some other medium (if they envision it as a map of a river, for instance, they would need to draw mountains or animals). 
   
   
3. Hand out two yogurt containers to each student, one for paint, one for water.  They will have to mix the two themselves.  Ask them how much water they will need to add for the paint to make a river-like pattern across the page? (Note: a ratio of 3 to 1 for water and paint makes a nice drip effect).
   
   
4. Whatever drawing the students choose to make their patterns into, emphasize the presence of water (Rain could be falling on bare trees).  As a follow up, have the students write a short paragraph or sentence about their dripping scene.

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