More than 1,200 children learned where rain water goes after it runs into storm drains, analyzed samples from different bodies of water to determine where the water originated and learned ways to keep trash from polluting the water .
The youngsters – fifth-grade students from 20 metro-area schools – took part in the 12th annual Metro Children’s Water Festival last week.
Freshwater Society Project Manager Cherie Wagner was on the festival’s planning committee and Freshwater intern Madeline Coles
 |
|
| A student experiments with water cohesion |
volunteered in the Children’s Water Arcade.
In the arcade, the kids played games and created their own art while leaning about water.
In the H2O Olympics, the kids learned about surface tension by trying to float a paper clip on the surface of water. They placed a paperclip on the tip of a fork, gently lowered the fork onto the surface of the water and then slowly removed the fork.
The kids also were challenged to count how many drops of water they could get on top of a penny. The activity demonstrated the cohesive properties of water.
At the Fish Prints table, the students painted plastic fish replicas and then pressed the fish on paper to create a stamp. The idea comes from the Japanese art Gyotaku, or “fish rubbing,” where artists paint dead fish to
 |
|
| Soap bubble shows water’s surface tension |
understand the external anatomy.
The Metro Children’s Water Festival is organized by a committee of representatives from the seven Twin Cities metropolitan counties and other organizations including: the Freshwater Society, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Metropolitan Council, University of Minnesota Extension, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnehaha Creek Watershed District and Mississippi Watershed Management Organization.