Twenty-three water drops became a rain Friday. Ages 3 to 13, students from the Christian Homeschoolers of Hawai‘i and a good number of their parents assumed the role of water droplets when they toured the Wyland Clean Water Tour exhibit,
Twenty-three water drops became a rain Friday.
Ages 3 to 13, students from the Christian Homeschoolers of Hawai‘i and a good number of their parents assumed the role of water droplets when they toured the Wyland Clean Water Tour exhibit, said Mona Clark, executive director of the Kaua‘i Children’s Discovery Museum, in an e-mail release.
Clark said the children assumed the identity of water drops in touring the maze and participating in the watershed demonstration and the science experiments that touched on salinity, turbidity, macroinvertebrate counting and pH.
The Wyland Clean Water Tour is made up of three main components which children explore by assuming the identity of water drops in their investigation of the 1,000-square foot maze/game.
“Kids travel through different watershed habitats including lakes, streams, rivers, wetlands, estuaries, bays and oceans,” Clark said. “As the maze design allows kids to take a variety of different pathways, most of the children go through the maze many times with each trip providing a different learning experience.”
Clark said the science center was a source of great excitement for the homeschool students who enthusiastically performed experiments on water properties and quality.
“The kids tested water brought from Nawiliwili Harbor as well as other water samples,” Clark said. “Tests were performed on turbidity, pH, salinity and macroinvertibrate counting.”
As part of the Wyland Clean Water Tour, Clark said an enviroscape featuring an agricultural area, small housing development, factory and roadway is set up.
Pollutants in the form of Kool Aid power for pesticides, lemonade powder for household chemicals, soy sauce for leaking oil and chocolate milk for industrial contaminants are introduced into the environment, Clark said.
“The children were fascinated,” she said. “With misting bottles in hand, they acted as the rain on the landscape and could easily observe how the pollutants ran down the hillsides and streams to eventually end up in the ocean.”
The Wyland Clean Water Tour is set up in the Kukui Grove Shopping Center exhibit area fronting the Deja Vu store, and is made possible through the efforts of the shopping center and the Kaua‘i Children’s Discovery Museum.
