PUA LOKE – How do your rebuild your environment after it’s been destroyed? This was just one of the questions posed to fifth-graders who took in the water festival held Friday at the Pua Loke Arboretum, coordinated by the county
PUA LOKE – How do your rebuild your environment after it’s been destroyed?
This was just one of the questions posed to fifth-graders who took in the water festival held Friday at the Pua Loke Arboretum, coordinated by the county Department of Water’s Kymm Solchaga, public relations specialist.
Solchaga said this event coincides with National Water Education Day held nationwide as well as in 23 countries around the world.
Fifth-grade students from schools island-wide were selected to attend the event because, according to Solchaga, these students are nearing the end of their elementary-school careers, and this festival will give them more insight and education before the students embark on their middle-school and high-school educational paths.
The festival will hopefully give them more knowledge before they delve into more studies in earth and life sciences, she said, noting that the fifth-graders came from both public and charter schools. The total number is almost double the attendance of last year’s event that, according to Nawiliwili Watershed Council’s Rhoda Libre, totaling between 500 and 600 students last year.
Volunteers are an integral part of the success of this year’s festival that hosted approximately 985 students, Solchaga said. Col. Jerel Knudsen of the Kapa‘a High School JROTC program brought over 56 cadets whose primary objective was to accompany each of the student groups through the field, as well as help man the dozen educational-activity stations.
Knudsen added that once the students left, the cadets would help strike the tents and clean up the facility.
Alu Like kupuna as well as volunteers from the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii also turned out in force to help man the stations.
Additionally, there were more participating agencies than the festival held at the same time last year. Solchaga said this year’s new exhibitors included the Kauai Invasive Species Committee, whose members focused on the threat of myconia, and the Hanalei Watershed Council, whose hopscotch activity kept students occupied while teaching them about the environment and the organisms that inhabit it.
Additionally, Solchaga said, there were “filler” stations that provided more interaction and education while classes waited to attend other stations. These included those manned by personnel from the Kaua‘i Fire Department as well as American Medical Response headlined by paramedic Danny Sagadraca’s magic and the appearance of Andy the Ambulance.
Sparky the fire dog, McGruff the police mascot, and Smokey the Bear also were on hand to distribute rulers and other information to the attending students and their teachers.
Trivia questions on water as well as a water-shooting station provided even more filler activity.
Solchaga explained that teachers were to select four of the 12 available activity stations beforehand, and before their allocated time was over, it appeared that many of the classes had exceeded their four-station quota, a fact that thrilled Solchaga.
Gregg Fujikawa of the county Department of Water pointed out that the tables were designed and constructed by one of their summer interns, Kesson Yamamoto, who had to leave for school before he got to see how well the fruits of his labor worked out at the “Incredible Journey” station, an interactive booth where students built a bracelet using stops along the water’s journey, each stop being determined by a water-bottle spinner.
Another popular station was the water relay, where students had to move water using the bucket-brigade technique, while another station involved the H2Olympics, where school teams competed using their knowledge of science and physics to calculate water displacement.
Finally, to rebuild a destroyed environment, students visited “Humpty Dumpty” where a terra cotta pot was crushed, representing the destroyed environment. Students’ task was to rebuild the smashed pot using glue, one student commenting, “This one’s got too many small pieces. I can’t do it!”
That led to the instructor’s advice of “Take care and protect our environment.”
Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@pulitzer.net.
