2. Upstream Downstream

Beginning the Project

It might be helpful to start by giving students an overview of the whole sequence of activities and explaining your expectations.

The first activity, First Water Memory, engages students in thinking about their earliest memories of water. It offers a brief introduction to learning about water, grounding the topic in students’ personal experiences.

This can be followed with the activity Design a Watershed, which has students design their own plot of land and then connect their plots to make up a watershed. This leads to a definition of “watershed” and a discussion about what happens after it rains, when stormwater washes over the landscape and down into the waterways. What are the implications for the natural resources, the community, and downstream neighbors?