River Watch was invited to present at the Sauk River Watershed District’s annual Frozen Fest, an educational event where 4th graders travel to stations led by various experts and explore a wide variety of hydrology topics.
Using an activity perfected at the 2024 Green Camp, we explored concepts of a watershed, and what it means to be upstream and downstream. The students were each given a lump of clay and told to construct something they would find in a watershed. Obviously this is a wide prompt since a watershed is just an area of land. We got sculptures across the gamut, including many turtles, bridges, and the occasional volcano. The students placed their creations on one of two baking sheet with holes drilled near the short side. This allowed water to drain from one tray (watershed) to the other. Adding in some food coloring to represent pollution, and a basin to collect water from the second tray, we were able to model the movement of water from the Sauk River Watershed, to the Mississippi River Watershed, to the Gulf of Mexico.
What I love about this demonstration is that the hands-on nature of it keeps kids engaged, while it explores 3 simple, but incredibly fundamental topics. My hope is that this activity sparks an awareness of what it means to live upstream and how pollution moves across the landscape - collecting in large quantities downstream from where it started.
This is a fundamental concept that is regularly ignored when looking at water infrastructure projects. It is difficult to measure the impact of a single project when the water downstream is a mix of so many upstream sources. The default assumption then becomes that the downstream impact from any single project is NOTHING. Our inability to accurately measure downstream impacts is not an excuse to ignore them entirely, as is the current standard practice.
By initiating this idea to young learners, my hope is that when they are involved in decision making, they keep this fundamental idea in mind and use it to guide their decision making.
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