This year, Water Awareness Month means keeping kids safe... and busy
Let’s face it: Arizona Water Awareness Month – which is now – is not exactly an attention-getter this year.
Precious water may be a fundamental building block of life as we know it, but in April 2020, other matters are keeping the minds of Arizonans occupied. In many households, that means keeping the kids safe… and busy.
As part of Water Awareness Month, the Arizona Department of Water Resources has collected packages of educational water-related activities created by State and federal agencies that can help home-bound kids spend time productively and enjoyably learning about water. We call it our "Kids Page: Fun Activities for Kids."
Locally, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) has aggregated activities and lesson plans created by its member communities that promote good water conservation habits and educate students about the importance of sound water stewardship.
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, meanwhile, has prepared educational tools that include quizzes about “the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we live on.”
On the federal level, the National Weather Service has created a package of games, quizzes, coloring books and (in the words of the NWS) “other fun stuff.”
(What kind of fun stuff? The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s “Disaster Preparedness Coloring Book,” a part of the NWS package of educational materials, may not sound like the most high-spirited use of crayons. But for kids at home sheltering from COVID-19, its drawings of fires and tornadoes are a reminder that things could be worse.)
The ADWR Kids Page also includes a link to the “Water -- Use It Wisely” educational materials.
A 20-plus year campaign to promote water conservation in Arizona, the Water – Use it Wisely campaign is itself an education-materials package. It includes water-related games, kid-friendly tips for saving water around the house and educational materials for teachers. Which, under current circumstances, mostly means mom and/or dad.
ADWR long has included the Water – Use it Wisely campaign in the Arizona Water Facts section of the ADWR website. Arizona Water Facts is itself a valuable source of, yes, Arizona water facts presented in an entertaining and educational format.
In addition to the content cited above, ADWR’s “Kids Page” includes links to educational materials created by the Central Arizona Project; the Salt River Project; the U.S. Geological Survey; the Environmental Protection Agency; and, the U.S. Department of Energy.
