Wonderful Water July Day 3

After some archery, we played "Flower and the Bees" and "How Many Ways Can You Cross the River". Then we hiked to the schoolhouse and did our gratitude circle. We then finished the last three Ocean Zones (Midnight, Abyssal and Hadal) which included creatures like the Snipe eel, Vampire Squid, Sea cucumbers, Tripod Fish and more. Then we discussed water pollution (causes and solutions) and started an experiment. We made one cup with water and red food dye with some celery stalks in it and the other with water, food dye, celery stalks and soap. We hypothesized whether or not we think the soap will affect the capillary uptake in the celery. We will be able to see what happens tomorrow and record the results. Then I showed them a model of "Farmer Joe's land" that had point and non-point pollutants occurring. The kids told me what to do to prevent or stop the pollution from occurring. Solutions included: moving the livestock away from the creek, planting grass and trees, organic farming without pesticides, fixing leaky sewage pipes, etc. Then we played a capture the flag style Water Pollution Game. In teams, they had to get across to the Solution box with out getting tagged and find a solution card that helped protect or clean their own team's water source. So for example, if their water was being polluted by a factory dumping waste, they had to cross over and get the solution card that said "Notify authorities of unlawful waste dumping". After snack, we talked about Archimedes and his invention of the Archimedes' Screw. Then we made our own version to test out and play with at the creek. On our hike to the creek, we picked blueberries to snack on and visited the chickens, guinea hens and bunnies. While at the shoals part of the creek, we found an opossum track and bird tracks. The picture of mud (above) isn't a kid's hand print but an opossum's!