Activity: Healthy Rivers – Early Learning

Quick summary: In this activity children investigate healthy rivers. Younger children experiment with how various objects float or sink. Older children are asked to imagine that a large tub of water is a river and watch as various materials (contaminants) are added to the river and affect the health of the river. Children are asked to make assessments about what is a healthy river and how we can keep our rivers healthy.

EYLF Learning Outcome	Elaborations
Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world	3. Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment
Outcome 4: Children are involved and confident learners	1. Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity 2. Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, enquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating 3. Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another 4. Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials

 

Equipment needed: 

Ages – 0 to 2

• Tub or bucket of water.
• Range of materials that either float or sink (such as peoples, shells, sand, feathers, paper, leaves, short sticks, corks etc.

Ages – 2 to 5

• 5 cups containing 5 different contaminants. You can use the actual contaminants or substitute the contaminants with less real (and less dangerous or disgusting) contaminants. Examples of contaminants could include – oil, paint, detergent, dog poo, chemicals, old medicine, garden fertiliser.
• Empty fish tank, clear plastic tub or large clear soft drink bottle.
• Large stirring spoon that won’t be used for food preparation.
• Small plastic toy marine animals that can be cleaned (optional).

Supporting resources:

Other resources:

• Cool Australia Water Digital Library
• Cool Australia Water factsheet
• Cool Australia Water video (see below)

Cool Australia Presents Water from Cool Australia on Vimeo.

 

The team at Cool Australia continually reviews and refines our Early Learning resources in line with expert advice and current educational practices.