Intro to Watersheds

We've learned a lot about the Hudson River, and I often use the term Hudson River Watershed. But- what exactly IS a watershed?

I started introducing watersheds with a few simple hands-on activities. Using the HR as our example, we examined how a lake at the top of the highest mountain could eventually travel all the way down NY state and collect more water along the way.

Be a Watershed

Have kids make a mountain with their arms. Use a spray bottle to simulate rain right above the mountain. Where does the water flow? Downwards to lower points in elevation. Generally, you should expect two "lakes" to form at each elbow. Begin explaining how there are certain areas that all water will move towards.

Make a Watershed

The simplest way to demonstrate watersheds is crumple up a piece of paper (regular paper works so-so, wax or waterproof is preferable). Uncrumple it a little, not completely, and begin tracing the peaks and valleys (high and low points) with different colors. Use crayola washable markers! It is important that they are water-based. 

You can take a step further by incorporating urban planning.. talk about and tell kids to use markers and symbols to place important structures around their watershed.

• Home
• Grocery Store
• Restaurant
• Mall
• School
• Hospital
• Church

Use a spray bottle to simulate rain over your watershed. Place inside a tray or something to help contain the water and mess. Examine what happens to your structures. Are they safe? Are they flooded? Are there any plateaus that stayed relatively dry? Are there any lakes, rivers, streams that appear to have formed? You can continue explaining that high points like mountain ridges delineate the different watersheds. The Hudson River watershed has numerous mountainous areas and ultimately all water continues traveling downwards eventually feeding into the river.

Tap Water Taste Test

Preserving the water quality in our watershed is particularly important because some of our neighboring towns actually receive their drinking water FROM the Hudson River!

As the ongoing debate of tap vs bottled water continues globally, we decided to do our own tap water blind taste test to see if we could tell the difference and vote on which one we thought tastes better than the others.

We had there color coded cups: tap water, bottled water and filtered tap water (Brita)

UNFORTUNATELY we had some unexpected outcomes due to refrigeration errors. In order to prepare enough water for our ~35 kids I prepared 2 pitchers of each water type and put in the fridge until snack. We ALREADY had a full pitcher of tap water in the fridge so I went ahead and used that without tasting first. Turns out that water must have been sitting in the fridge for a while... It tasted terrible and we're blaming it on the fact that it was an open pitcher without a lid and must have acquired some the fridge's lingering food odors or something. Our staff went and tried some direct sink water after the test was over and it did not taste like that, nor did the second pitcher of tap water I didn't end up needing.... however you could still taste some chlorine when compared to the filtered water.

Needless to say, we did not get the results we expected or wanted but sometimes with science that's just the way things happen. There were only like 2 votes for tap water, and a very close tie between bottle and filtered... filtered was actually in the lead for a while but bottled got a few last minute votes at the end.

If the tap water tasted normal, I predict it would have received some more votes and filtered would have been the winner.