In the gymnasium, singer/songwriter and naturalist Chris Rowlands captivated large groups with puppetry and silly songs with lyrics both scientific and scatological that conveyed lessons about recycling, energy conservation, wildlife biology and wetland protection.
“Wetlands act like a sponge,” he explained. “They absorb water and prevent flooding, and they also filter out pollution.”
The scatology came into play when Rowland’s puppet Bernard the Turkey Vulture explained how his species are natural recyclers, turning dead animals into fertilizer.
Rowlands, who also is a naturalist for the National Audubon Society, performed in front of a backdrop that he painted himself, featuring a crowd of native animals and a cut-away view of a leaf.
Meanwhile, across campus in the Wilks Center, Hamilton’s chief of maintenance at the water treatment plant Rick Sowell used a role-playing exercise to teach students about the water cycle.
Students imagined themselves as water molecules and started out in one of several natural environments such as clouds, glaciers or rivers. Then, with the roll of special dice, they either stayed where they were or moved to a different environment, representing how heat energy and wind can move water molecules not only from one place to another, but from one state of matter to another.
Next door, Niki Marengo, an education assistant at the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District, led a program called “Sum of All Parts.”
Each student was given a piece of laminated paper with a blue, wavy edge to represent a river. Their assignment was to create a $5 million development. Fairfield West student Megan Brayton, for instance, built a house on a raft with a big fish coming along to tear the house down.
Once the pictures were lined up on the floor, Marengo gave the students objects to represent the pollution that their developments would create, then showed how those pollutants would run downstream.
“What someone does up the river is going to affect what’s going on down the river,” she explained, reinforcing the concept of the “Three Rs” — reduce, reuse, recycle.
The Children’s Water Festival is a production of the Hamilton to New Baltimore Groundwater Consortium, which rounded up 88 volunteers to help shepherd the children to more than 30 different events in every building on the MUH campus.
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