Water Introductory Module


Subject: Introduction from NZ Water kids

Kia Ora Everyone,

We go to Parawera School and we are in Room One.

We live in the North Island of new Zealand. It is summer here now. The daily temperatures are about 24 degrees Celsius. The beaches around New Zealand are wonderful. On the East coast we have golden sand and on the West coast we have black sand.

New Zealand is surrounded by sea - the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea. In NZ there are lots of sights and tourists like coming to take photos, to ski, to tramp in our bush and to see our wildlife and farms.

We live in the country and come to school on our school bus. There are 17 students in our class. We are aged between 8 and 11 years. The land our school is built on used to a swamp. Our school is 94 years old. There are 50 students in our school. We have 3 classrooms,(one is new), a library, a pre-school, a school house (but at the moment no teachers live in it), and a community hall. We have a rugby field, a soccer field, a tennis court, a netball court, a swimming pool and an adventure playground.

We are looking forward to hearing from you and working with you.



Water Module 1

Dear Water Teammates,

Three-fourths of the earth is water and one-fourth is land. Ninety-seven percent is salt water and three percent is fresh water. One percent of the fresh water is in liquid form, and this is made from creeks, and lakes. The other fresh water if found in glaciers, and ice. There is a game that we play in our first block class. We get a globe and we toss it to other people in our class room. When we catch it we look at our right thumb, and if its on land we mark one tally on land but if it's on water we'll mark one tally on water. Then count the tally marks. Usually there are about three times as many water as there are for land. This means that there is more water than land. People are concerned about wasting water because only one percent is drinkable.


Dear Water Pen Pals, We are doing the rainfall in Conroe. We're going to tell you some of the figures. In 1994 the rainfall was 59.11 inches with 23.41 inches in October on one day! We had the biggest flood in over 50 years. In 1995 we had 50.68 inches; 10 inches less than we had in 1994. Our average rainfall per year is 47.3 inches, but this year we've only had 1.3 inches! We are in a sort of drought. We compared the rainfall of Conroe and the Rainforest and we got these figures. The rainforest gets an average of over 60 inches a year with some parts getting between 200 and 400 inches a year! When we compared them the difference is 353! They get more than an inch a day!


Dear Water project partners, Hello from Granger, Texas. Here is our 2nd module. We worked in pairs and wrote a report based on our research on a major body of water in our area, Granger Lake. The lake is located about 40 miles northeast of Austin, the capital of Texas. The lake lies to the east of a natural division in our topography called the Balcones uplift. West of the uplift line, the land is known as the Texas Hill Country, a region of dry rocky soil. East of the line, in Granger, lies the Blackland farm country and Granger Lake.

In the past, Texas spring downpours made the San Gabriel River spill over its banks and flood local farmland and towns. The US Army Corps of Engineers built a 3-mile long dam on the river to control this flooding. Water was first impounded in 1972 and the lake was opened in 1980. It occupies 4,400 surface acres.

Student water scientists will tell you about our tour of the dam, the flood gates, the stilling area, the spillway, and the weather station. On a cold, windy day in March, Ranger Kim Knopf took our class on this tour and conducted a learning activity on the importance of wetlands.



Water Module 3

Hi, fellow water project participants

1. Because we are an island, you can find almost every water sport being participated in by Bermudians and/or tourists. We are a rest-stop for yachts sailing further south for the winter and north in the spring. We are visited by "Tall Ships" and NATO convoys for R and R. Our ocean water is not polluted as we have no industries. We have very special sail boats which are not found anywhere else in the world, so we thought you might like to know about them. Actually, there are some very similar ones in New Zealand, but they aren't exactly the same. 2. We also us the water around us for fishing, so we have included some information about fishing and the fish you can find here. 3. We added some information about the Ducking stool in St. George's in which scolding women were ducked into the water!

2. FISHING This has been a way of life for many Bermudians since the first settlers landed here and realised how plentiful the surrounding seas were. The stocks of fish in our waters have suffered a serious decline however, and in March 1990 the Government introduced a ban on fishpots. These pots, some as big as a room in a house, trap all kinds of species, whether or not they are of value. Reef fish were especially affected. Many have noticed that this ban is working, fish are coming back.


Ways we waste water: leave water running, dump toxic wastes in (sewage), take bathes instead of showering, drinking only half of a full glass of water then pouring the rest down the drain , flushing toilets, emptying pools too often, long car washes, waiting until the water gets cold enough or hot enough, letting the bathtub fill up too high, watering lawns to excess, taking long showers

Water Cycle: In class I learned about the water cycle. I was surprised to learn that water comes from plants and that this is called Transpiration. I was surprised to learn that water evaporates more quickly if the lid is left off. I learned the words precipitation, condensation, transpiration and evaporation. I was surprised to learn that water evaporates from clothes hanging on the clothesline. Not many of my classmates have clotheslines. Many of the new subdivisions do not allow them. I learned that there is water under the earth called ground water. I did not know that this water flowed back into Lake Ontario and that many individuals pollute this water with the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Water Source: Our water source is Lake Ontario , but it was interesting to learn that 15 of 30 individuals in the class did not use the water as it comes from the tap for drinking. Some used a filter system called Brita. Others purchased bottled water(water from springs) , for either did not like the taste (chlorine used to purify) or were concerned about the quality of the drinking water. The bottled water industry is growing by leaps and bounds. We hear that the lake water is acceptable for drinking but many are disbelievers.



Water Module 4


WATER MODULE 4 - - POEMS AND STORIES FROM GRANGER, TEXAS

The One Clean Stream

One day there was a town it was called Stine. The people were getting sick because the water was not clean. But one boy was in the forest and he found a water stream and it was clean. So he got his people to drink the water and the people got well. And he was King.


Dear Water Pals I hope you like our Module 4. This time in our Module 4 we get to write a poem or a story. I wrote why water is good. And I told why water is good. We are getting out of school on the 24 of May. Bye for now.



Water's good because it makes your body healthy, you have to take a bath with it, you need to wash your dishes with it, you need to water your plants, your grass and your trees, And you really need to drink it.



Hello Water Pals, Now that we know a LOT more about water - and how important it is to our daily lives - we are trying to be more responsible about how we take care of it. We found out about the "Blue Thumb" idea of learning and knowing how to take care of our water, just like people with a "green Thumb" know how to care for plants.
We found out that many factories pollute the waters they are new either because they have dumped waste into them, or because the wastes they put in the ground seep into the water.
We learned that in our area (upstate New York) there is a lake that people say is the dirtiest lake in the United States. We have a wonderful park area nearby, there is a "street" through it that only people can be on with bikes, rollerblades, on foot, and so on. You can rent boats there, and you can ride on a tram there. There is a special park there called Kid's Landing. It has an old boat you can go on and pretend you are on the lake, there are tires lined up in end that you can run on, and lots of sand...BUT you can't swim in the lake. You can't fish in the lake. You can't drink water from the lake. They don't even try to take water from the lake to put through a treatment plant for use. They are still trying to make factories that were along its banks take more responsibility for its cleanup. Our politicians are trying to get federal monies to help clean it up. We have a HUGE mall at one end called "The Carousel Mall" that has a real working carousel in it...and many developers are ready to start development along the south end if and when it ever gets cleaned up. They have tried to introduce some creatures that "eat" garbage into the lake, plus ban any factory from being along its edge, and give nature time to heal it. So far, it is still unuseable. It was a chemical company who was responsible for the most damage. Part of the problem is that most of the damage was done before the laws were strict enough or specific enough for liability to be clear-cut.
We wrote letters to our local politicians to keep on fighting for Onondaga Lake. It is within 5 miles of most of our homes, and we would like to see it usable within our lifetimes.
Our local water board was VERY helpful in helping us learn about water, and how to save it. We got 2 booklets. One is called THE STORY OF OUR WATER SUPPLY featuring "Willing Water", a cute character with a raindrop has. He taught us lots of interesting facts. We also got a water booklet called "THE STORY OF DRINKING WATER.
We created a list of ways we could save water early in the project when we learning about the nature of water. These booklets helped us add to our list. Here are some of the highlights:
Check inside faucets for leaks. Just a slow drip can waste 15 or 20 gallons a day. Put a bit of food coloring in the toilet tank to see if it leaks into the bowl.
Try to keep showers to 5 minutes or less in length.(Try getting wet, turning off the shower, lathering up, then turning the shower back on to rinse...this last part was one of our suggestions.)
Keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerato>

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