Water Festival Adventure

Hundreds of 4th grade students are lining up and boarding buses to return to school after experiencing their much anticipated Water Festival. Excitement buzzes through the line as they rejoin friends and talk about their day.

"I'm going to tell my family how we can save water for our watershed!"

"I like this because it's REAL SCIENCE!"

"I never knew this much about science and now I care about water."

Arizona Project Wet facilitates large scale Water Festivals in order to instill a deeper understanding of water in the earth systems and Arizona's water resources through a 4th grade curriculum unit driven by exploration and inquiry. The program includes teacher professional development; 10 lesson plans that activate learning; a festival event with water professionals and community volunteers engaging students in hands-on activities about groundwater, watersheds, the water cycle and water conservation technology.

Municipalities, school districts, corporate sponsors, and Arizona Project Wet staff work closely together to fund and plan annual festivals. APW travels across the state and facilitates 25-35 festivals per year.

In the mean time, teachers attend professional development workshops and implement pre-festival curriculum aligned to state standards in the classroom.

APW Staff recruit and train community volunteers to facilitate upcoming activites. Many of the volunteers are professionals in the field of water conservation.

At the crack of dawn (or sometimes much earlier) the APW loads up their trailer of materials and heads out to the the chosen site. Municipality and corporate volunteers meet them there to help unload materials and set up activities for the big day.

There's a quick breakfast break and team meeting for volunteers, then school buses arrive and activities commence! Classes rotate through 4 hands-on activities each half hour:

Phew! Festival Days are long, but so rewarding for everyone involved. Students load back on buses and return to school and then staff and volunteers break down activites in an incredibly efficient manner. We love our volunteers- they contribute such a lasting impact for our young generations, and we literally cannot make Festivals happen without them!

Back at school, classes execute a series of post-Festival activities from APW's curriculum guide. Students take a pre and post unit assessment which is sent back to APW for data analysis.

The future of Arizona's water is fully dependent on engaging children in educational experiences which instill a sense of whole-systems thinking and stewardship for their environment. Thank you for choosing to be a part of it!