Volunteering at a Watershed Festival
/I volunteered for a James River Basin Partnership Watershed Festival at a public school about 10 minutes from my house. There were about 250 5th graders that participated over a 4-hour period (fortunately we had a lunch break in the middle). For the first sessions we were in a classroom because it was quite cold outside, and the school grounds were muddy from recent rain/snow. In the afternoon we were in an outdoor classroom – out of the mud and enjoying the sunshine and warm enough temperatures. It was an exhilarating day!
A partner and I led a game from Project Wet called The Incredible Journey where every student becomes a drop a water and they move through the 9 stations (clouds, plants, animals, rivers, oceans, lakes, groundwater, soil, and glaciers) based on a role of a dice at each stop. With 25 students moving around the space, it sometimes appeared chaotic, but every session was a success. Some students/drops-of-water got stuck in the ocean…some alternated between clouds and other stations. A few spent significant time as plants! It was a fun activity…and hopefully a learning experience too.
As we packed up everything in the plastic bin at the end of the day – the dice taking up most of the space – I realized that it had been an exhausting day. In the flurry of activity during the sessions, it was easy to be so engaged with the students enjoying the game that it was easy to just keep going.
