The Water Festival

The Water Festival was a local festival put on to teach children about water conservation and just about anything else to do with water. It's following the Ontario curriculum for Grades 3-5. Our homeschool group could go on two of the days. The person at the entrance (who I assume organizes the day) said something about Austyn being the age of grade one and that it's suppose to be for older kids. She said she was going to talk to the homeschool mom who arranged the trip. It's interesting how people who don't know much about homeschoolers seem to think that they have to be an exact age just like school kids to attend things. However, we don't follow the Ontario Curriculum schedule and he did just fine. I heard so many compliments about how smart he was and how even Zoe (who was basically taging along) did things better than some of the older school kids there. It was interesting to hear things like that from the volunteers. The above picture is of Austyn learning about sealed wells and wells that are not sealed. 

This is showing what types of materials allow water to drain through faster or more efficiently and why. 

Here Austyn is a farmer and Zoe is a city dweller. They are spraying pesticides on their land (powdered Koolaid). Then they spray water (precipitation) on their land and watch how the pesticides drain into the sewers and eventually into our rivers and lakes. 

They are eagles running to get one fish at a time to bring back to their nests. Eagles can only carry one fish at a time. 

Here they are plants in front of a waterway. They are trying to stop balls (pollutants) from entering the waterway. The more plants there are the less balls get through.

This is a survival game. They have to pick up sticks from each category. There is sun, food, space, and air I think. Each time the levels get more difficult because if the environment gets polluted there are less resources. So the round boards cover some of the sticks up and they are only able to get the sticks that remain in view.

This was a fun play where they learned about how much water we use in our homes when we do different tasks like taking a shower or washing dishes. 

We learned about boaters safety, but as you can see from the picture, the whole time Austyn was distracted by the flair gun. Ha ha ha!!! I'm not sure he heard anything the man said. Ha ha ha!!

This was a cool game where they were the water in the river and they had to put on a coat with Velcro on it.  As they rolled along the river they picked up different coloured felt pieces and at the end they collect them and learn what pollutants they picked up and took down stream.

They learned about daily consumption in a home by this interactive tower that lit up large pop bottles. The whole tower represents our average water consumption in a home. As they touched each button it broke down what each bottle or group of bottles represented.

This illustrated how pollutants seep into our underground soil. 

Here they are testing the acidity level of many common household items. There were things like milk, water, vinegar, Windex, lemon juice. Did you know Windex is less acidic than regular tap water?!

There were many more things at this all-day trip. We learned how septic tanks worked, the difference between efficient and inefficient taps and toilets, about ecosystems, household cleaning products, oil spills and how to try and contain them, how water is treated, how much drinking water exists on earth, and the list goes on. 

I hope that they continue to allow homeschoolers to attend this festival at many age levels. My kids may be young but they got so much out of it! It was a good day!