Bourne Elsea Park Church Of England Primary Academy
Striving For Excellence, Caring For All In a Loving And Caring Christian Environment.
Water, Water Everywhere!
Linking to their ‘Water Water Everywhere’ topic and our Eco Schools, children in year 5 have taken part in workshops delivered by Anglian Water. They had a fantastic half day learning about where water comes from, the importance of water, what we can do to be water wise and Anglian Water’s role in this process.
The workshop began with the children recapping what they already knew about the water cycle. We then became ‘water investigators’ and had to identify what had been added to the different water samples. We used our sense of smell, sight and taste to find out what had been added to the water. We discovered the following: dandelion and burdock, brown sugar, vinegar, salt, tap water and tap water with no chlorine.
Richard (the facilitator) then shared an important issue with the children and explained how in our part of the UK we get very little rain (the same amount of rain as in Spain) so we need to be more water wise and help to preserve our water. Currently we use twice as much water as we need to. The children were shocked to find out if we left the classroom tap on for 2 minutes we could waste up to 9 litres of water. That’s up to 7000 litres of water a year! Richard then set them the ultimate challenge of washing up paint pots using the least amount of water as possible. It was much harder than it looked.
Everyone agreed they would make an extra effort to reduce the amount of water they waste each day and made their own pledge of how they could do this. As a class we discussed ideas of how we could be more water wise including – putting less water in the bath tub, putting a bottle of water in the fridge for a cold drink, spending less time in the shower, turning the tap off while we brush our teeth and using the short flush on the toilets.
In the second part of the session we spent time learning about sewage and Anglian Waters role in cleaning water. We discovered that 40% of the world doesn’t have access to clean water. We then thought about the word flushable and what it means. Richard taught us all about the pipes under the ground and how Anglian Water spent 10 million pounds last year on unblocking pipes from wet wipes, oil and fat. We investigated what happens to different items that we might put down our drains or flush down the toilet and how these can cause blockages if they aren’t flushable. Richard explained how we need to encourage our families to wipe our pans with a tissue first before washing them up to help reduce the amount of oil that is washed away down our drains.
Year 5 had a fantastic half day as part of their topic. The workshops gave us a lot to think about and all the children were keen to go home and share what they had learnt about water and preserving water with their families. It was an excellent addition to our Eco schools work, and allowed the children to gain a further understanding in a fun and informative way.
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