When a terrible drought hits the beautiful Kapiti Plain and the animals leave, young herd boy Ki-pat must find a way to end the drought and save the wildlife on the plain.

Buttermere class have loved sharing this book and using it as a foundation for some of our other work. After reading the book and seeing the illustrations the children were really interested in the animals in Africa, we therefore looked at different animals that live in Africa and how they compare to the animals which we have here in the UK. 

 

One of the tasks Buttermere completed linked to the Bringing the rain to Kapiti Plain text was describing different African animals. Each child sat at the front and chose an animal from the bag, while the rest of the class closed their eyes. The child then described the animal to the rest of the children and they had to guess which animal they had chosen. 
The children really enjoyed this and several of them went off and played the game independently once we had finished the whole class task. 

Kai-pat is the hero of the story; shooting an arrow into the big rain cloud, causing it to burst and for the rain to fall. The children had a lot of questions they wanted to ask Kai-pat, so we decided to do some hot seating, where children had the opportunity to both become ‘Kai-pat’ and answer questions and ask Kai-pat questions they wanted answered. We had lots of interesting questions such as- were you happy when it rained? How did you decide to make the arrow? 

After spending some time looking at different animals in Africa and in the story, Buttermere class chose their favourite animal and created a paper plate animal. We had lots of- lions, giraffes and zebras!