water & watersheds
Grades 4-6
Go With the Flow is a captivating Environmental Education Program designed for 4th - 6th grade at the Boardman River Nature Center. In this 2 hour program, students will learn about the Great Lakes watershed, the importance of wetlands and the many jobs they perform for humans, freshwater availability and much more! Through interactive games and an outdoor hiking adventure on the trails of the Grand Traverse County Natural Education Reserve students will explore the Boardman River dam removal case study and will have a better understanding of their relationship to the watershed our community interacts with every day. This program strives to inspire exploration, appreciation and conservation of our natural world.
water & watersheds will include three components:
What is a watershed?
A watershed is an area of land that drains into a common body of water. All points on land are part of one or more watersheds, i.e., the Great Lakes Watershed and the Boardman River/Lake Watershed. Students will work together to develop their own watershed models to better understand how water moves through the environment.
How can wetlands improve water quality in the Great Lakes?
Wetlands provide many jobs such as filtering out pollutants and sediment, mixing nutrients and oxygen into the water, absorbing extra water from heavy rains or runoff and much more. Students will take part in a hands-on activity to learn more about the importance of wetlands and the jobs they perform.
Water Distribution:
Freshwater is a scarce resource, making up 3% of all water on Earth. The Great Lakes watershed contains 20% of the available surface freshwater on the planet, students will learn more about this distribution and how to protect our freshwater.