Water Education Tools for Youth

This bundle includes 1 Rain to Drain: Slow the Flow Activity Kit plus 1 Watershed Decisions Activity Kit.

Water is an essential resource. While most everyone knows that we need water to survive, we often overlook all the other important roles water plays in our lives. It's not hard to think of all the direct water uses we encounter day to day, like drinking, bathing, cooking, cleaning, and watering our gardens. We use a lot more water indirectly everyday. Water is used for generating electricity, growing fruits and vegetable crops, raising livestock, manufacturing of nearly everything including electronics and construction materials, and transportation of products around the world.

Youth play an important role in becoming informed citizens and future decision makers. Engaging them in educational opportunities about water, science, and technology now will help to create a future generation of water stewards and innovators. A variety of award-winning resources for teaching youth about water are available from Penn State Extension.

Rain to Drain: Slow the Flow Activity Kit

This hands-on activity kit is easy to use in classrooms, afterschool programs, nature centers, scout meetings and even independently.

This experiment style series of activities leads youth and adults to a better understanding of the movement of stormwater in natural and developed communities. It's also a great introduction to green infrastructure and stormwater best management practices.

Order individual activity kits and books. Books are available to order in bulk for a discount.

Watershed Decisions Activity Kit

This is a hands-on, inquiry-based activity that helps older youth and adults learn about water quality issues surrounding small watersheds and the decision-making processes that go into improving those water quality issues.

As "new members" of a community organization interested in improving local water quality, Watershed Decisions participants role-play while examining simulated water samples, exploring the land users in their community, and then creating a plan for improving their watershed on a limited budget. There is no one solution to this activity and the results are dependent upon the creativity, opinions, and ideas of the participants.

Perfect for your classroom, environmental educational program, youth group, municipality, watershed association, or any other group interested in exploring this important topic. This kit is geared towards adults and older youth (aged 12-18) with a basic understanding of watersheds and is designed for use with 2 or more small groups of 4-10 people each.

Order individual Watershed Decisions Activity Kits.

The Watershed Decision Kit is the recipient of Excellence Awards from the National Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals (ANREP) and the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents (NAE4-HA).