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August 29, 2008
CHILDREN’S WATER FESTIVALS COMING THIS FALL
A series of Children’s Water Festivals are coming this fall to a community near you. Grade four teachers in Eastern Ontario are invited to book a date for their class at these no-cost events as soon as possible. Youngsters across the region have enjoyed these memorable, hands-on and totally-curriculum-based science programs for many years. The main themes being explored are water conservation, soil erosion, ground water movement, well workings and water habitat ecology.
Here’s the fall 2008 schedule:
Sept 24- Baxter Conservation Area near Kemptville
Sept 24 – 26 St Lawrence College in Cornwall
Sept 30- Foley Mountain Conservation Area in Westport
Oct 8- Mill of Kintail Conservation Area near Almonte
The school children come for the full day and move in small groups through a series of “Discovery Centres” outdoors. Each Discovery Centre is staffed with a competent instructor, often from professional environmental organizations and agencies. The instructor gives the kids valuable information and insights and leads them, with experiments and everyday objects, to some amazing truths about the irreplaceable role of water in our daily lives.
The children definitely take back a lot of information, memories and startling discoveries about our use of water to share with their family. As one of our veteran instructors says, “when the fun comes first, the learning comes naturally.”
These four festivals plus the French-language festival at La Ferme Drouin in May make up the five venues of the umbrella group known as the Eastern Ontario Children’s Water Festivals. Thousands of area grade four children have already seen and experienced a Children’s Water Festival first hand since it started in our area in 2003 with the assistance of the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
These festivals are now sponsored in part by Mississippi Valley Conservation, Rideau Valley Conservation Authority, the City of Ottawa, the Children’s Water Education Council, the Mississippi-Rideau Source Protection Region, the Harold Crabtree Foundation, Ontario Power Generation and TransCanada PipeLines.
To get more information or to book a place for your class, please contact:
Kemptville – Peter Goddard, 613-489-3592, peter.goddard@rvca.ca
Cornwall- Jordan Ann Kevan, 613-936-6620×224, jkevan@riverinstitute.ca
Westport- Rebecca Whitman, 613-273-3255, rebecca.whitman@rvca.ca
Almonte- Suzanne McFarlane, 613-259-5307×225, smcfarlane@mvc.on.ca
An extensive menu of other nature studies programs is available at all sites at other times. Please ask the resource person for your area.