Would YOU drink water from a mud puddle?

Water can be polluted by many things - bugs, dirt, leaves, animal droppings, litter, etc. My class and I decided to make a water filter to see how effective it could be. Check out these incredible before and after pictures!

Gathering Water - Take Two!

Our first attempt to collect water took 18 minutes and 16 seconds by the time we got back to our village (aka: classroom). I explained that a lot of children in third world countries don't get to go to school because they spend most of the day collecting water! So, we discussed ways we could make our task easier and faster. My students came up with their top three suggestions:

           

                     1. Take a more direct route to the water source 

                     2. Use buckets with lids to prevent spillage

                     3. Find a mode of transportation that utilizes wheels

Thus, we mapped out the best route, traded our big blue buckets for smaller ones with lids, and borrowed a cart! We were ready to try again, hopefully taking less time.



Collecting water for the second time!

This takes teamwork.

 

Showing off our improved transportation.

Time is ticking off the clock!



Wow! What a race! In our second attempt to gather water, we finished in 8 minutes and 14 seconds! Congratulations to my fabulous firsties! They were so excited and proud. :) More importantly, my students really got an idea of how the daily struggle to get fresh drinking water can impact education in third world countries.

 

 

 

 

Different Bodies of Water

 

Our next BIG lesson: comparing different bodies of water. If so much of our earth is covered with water, why can only a small percentage be used for drinking? Our students examined and compared:

• fresh water and salt water
• water from a tap, a pond, a river, and a puddle
• different forms of water

In the course of our investigation, we wanted students to realize why river water was so different from pond water. So... we built a river in our Wonder Room and let the discussion flow!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A river runs through Oakland Elementary!

 

 

 

 

Students took notes on their observations.

 

 

 

 

Here is the mouth of our river.

 

 

 

My students were delighted with their river and made wonderful discoveries. Some of the exclamations overheard:

 

"Look, the river flows down into the bucket."

 

"The water is pushing the sand."

 

"Those rocks made a dam and the water is going over like a waterfall!"

 

and (after adding some paper balls to our river),

 

"When water flows over the rocks, the garbage gets trapped so the water stays clean."

 

 

Boy, talk about hands-on experience! Back in the classroom, students reasoned that river water moves and that keeps it fresh and clean compared to pond water which is stagnant! Yes - stagnant - we learned that great word!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Water, Water Everywhere, and Not a Drop to Drink

Wonderful wet water! My first graders are "soaking" up facts about water as fast as they can! We have started a quest to discover why fresh, clean water is such a scarcity. If so much of our earth is covered with water, why is only a small portion used for drinking?

We "dove" right in by watching a short video clip from a book called One Well: The Story of Water on Earth, by Rochelle Strauss. See the link below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m_3omxat1Y



 

My students were amazed by this video and immediately started asking a thousand questions! So I read an informational book to them and we began creating a Noticings Chart with facts about water.

Within 2 days, we completely filled up our chart because we were flooded with information!

 

 

 

Next, I showed the class a video on Wonderolpolis (see link below).

 

http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-much-water-do-you-need-to-survive/

 



 

We found out that it is not unusual for people in Africa to walk for 3 hours just to collect a bucket of water. 3 HOURS! We decided to have our own "water gathering" adventure. We pretended to be villagers in Africa and our job was to collect several buckets of water. We "traveled" to a bathroom on the other side of school Once we got there, we had to use smaller cups to fill up the larger buckets. Then we had to get all the way back to our classroom without spilling a drop!

 

 



The "Tribes" are ready to collect water!











Heading back to our "village"