Looking for fun and easy tools to help support your lesson plans on science and water resources? Tools that support multiple educational standards?
Check-out 1 or more of these FREE resources for 1st through 12th grades. Connect your students to Milwaukee area waterways, history and world’s water resources and challenges.
Educational Resource Downloads for all grade levels
MKE Waters & Beyond In-Class Presentation [All Grades]
This engaging and interactive presentation is the perfect start to a strong foundational understanding of how precious and limited freshwater is for all living things. Students will begin or continue their journey learning about water with a renewed enthusiasm and appreciation. This “30,000-foot view” of the Big Blue Planet’s waters can be tailored in content and duration and brings the message right back to their local waterways.
Milwaukee’s Waters Map [All Grades]
This 24×36” poster can be used on its own or with the watershed model to connect students to local waterways. The Milwaukee’s Waters map is easy to understand showing local rivers, their watersheds and places of interest. You’ll also receive a teaching aid that highlights general facts on our waterways and environmental and historical information.
!! UPDATED V4 !!
Simple SolutionsResource Guides[All Grades]
This useful guide can be used on its own or as a next step after the MKE WATERS & BEYOND presentation or watershed model. Each tri-fold guide has a map of the Great Lakes, a stormwater graphic and a fold-out poster with over 50 easy solutions to protect and conserve water. There is also an activity guide available to find ways to use the guide in the classroom and at home with their families. The Guides are in English and Spanish and can be provided for each student.
Water FlowsAround You
The journey of rain drops through your neighborhood.
Get out of the classroom and on to the school grounds to learn how rain drops turn to stormwater and becomes the #1 source of pollution to all our waterways. Multiple activities will allow students to map the school yard, watch where water flows into storm drains and even adopt a drain to ensure water flowing into the drains stays as clean as possible.
Water Works – Activities on Water’s Unique Chemical Properties[Grades 3 – 8]
Ignite student’s interest in water with these quick and easy hands-on activities adapted from Project Wet. These are perfect fill-in activities that show the 3 states of water and their density, adhesion, cohesion, capillary action and surface tension and explains the behavior of water’s unique molecules. Each activity can stand alone, or students can rotate through stations of all 3 activities.
WATER ON THE MOVE
The journey of a drop of water in the water cycle.
Immerse students in the path water takes in the water cycle with this interactive and on your feet activity in the classroom. This classroom activity moves students through stations of each phase of the water cycle as they learn how all the elements are interconnected
Conserve!Water Use Guide& Tracking[Grades 3 - 12]
These activities help students understand how we use water every day and gives them tools to reduce water and energy use. They will track water use at home and be able to share what they learn with the rest of the family.
![Water Art [All Grades]](https://www.freshwatertoolkit.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/water_art.png)
Water Art[All Grades]
This activity guide will direct you to ideas to spark visual creativity in students to design posters, cartoons, comics, collages, and more projects with water themes.
NOTE: If you’d like to explore a deep art and water experience, check out the Water Across the Curriculum program through the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University.
Day at the Waters - Beach/River Cleanup or Investigation
[All Grades]
Get your kids out of the classroom to a beach or river near you! You’ll receive instructions on how to coordinate a beach or river cleanup with other activities that groups of students can rotate through. It’s fun to rotate a picnic lunch on the waters. The cleanup can be a data collection event or a general cleanup. Gloves, bags and a data form can be provided by a MKE Water Partner. Transportation to the beach or river and chaperons need to be provided by the school.
Water Log
[Grades 3-8]
The Water Log is a multi-disciplinary tool to assess each student’s knowledge and retention of information learned on water resource lessons.
The Freshwater Tool Kit was created in collaboration with over a dozen Milwaukee area water educators and professionals since 1996.
Funders: Fund for Lake Michigan, KMD Consulting, The Shorewood Waters Project &
Wisconsin Coastal Management Program, Griffin Waters Collaboration
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