Students sing a song repeatedly while following along with a picture book containing the lyrics and illustrations. They are then encouraged to participate in several hands-on activities to reinforce learning of the vocabulary words.

Students read the book Down By The Bay and sing the song that goes with it. In this Down By The Bay lesson plan, students also come up with other rhymes that could go with the song.

First graders explore watermelons and collect and sort their seeds. In this watermelons lesson plan, 1st graders read the story Down By The Bay and then weigh, measure, collect seeds, sort, and eat their watermelon.

In this "Down by the Bay" instructional activity, students read the poem, respond to 8 short answer question, review 16 sight words, and color and arrange the 14 pictures in chronological order.