My favorite volunteer activity for Hays County Master Naturalists is Wimberley Outdoor Educators. As outdoor educators, we provide a field trip about something in the natural world to third, fourth and fifth grade students at Jacob’s Well Elementary. Our January activity is a Water Fair where students move through four stations learning about that vital resource, H2O.
In the “Where in the World is the Water?” station, we model for the students, showing them first a water molecule model and a globe, as a model of our earth. Our first question is, “How much of the earth’s surface is covered by water?” The students generally know that the answer is just a bit more that 70 percent. Then we use a circle graph to explain that 97 percent of that wonderful water is salt water, unavailable for use by humans and other terrestrial life forms.
Next the students get a chance to do the modeling. Using a graduated cylinder, a pipette and a plastic cup, the fifth graders end up with only 3 milliliters of water in their cup representing all the fresh water available for our use. Now the bad news comes. About 2 percent of that water is locked up in glaciers and icebergs. It’s our turn to ask questions. There were plenty of answers to, “What can we do about having only this small amount of available water?” In each class we saw evidence of what they learned in the classroom and at home. Some of the answers were, “don’t leave the water running when you brush your teeth,” “pour extra water from your water bottle on a plant,” “run the dishwasher only when it’s full,” and so on.
This year one of our volunteers suggested a new question. What if we asked the kids, “How does it feel when you see that one milliliter of water and know it represents all the water available to us. In each class there was one child who was not bothered by this dilemma, saying, “there is enough water for us now.” My favorite answer came from the young man who answered with just one word, “Terrified.” Perhaps we should all consider that question.
