Learning At Home 2020

Attention parents, students, and teachers:

We understand you are looking for resources to continue learning at home, and we want to help!

1. Explore the “Discover” tab on the top menu bar to learn about our watershed, including history, maps, videos, articles, and links to other resources.

2. We’ve also compiled the following list of resources and lesson ideas to help you keep the learning flowing:

Websites, Games, Activities

• Discover Water An interactive water education website - Choose Your Own Adventure style - complete with games, videos, facts, and more to help you learn about the role of water in our lives. 

• Canadian Wildlife Federation: Everyone Lives in a Watershed! Readings, lesson plan, and resources to create a hands-on watershed display.

• Canadian Geographic: Watersheds Interactive map, lesson plans, and article about watersheds.

• Alberta Tomorrow Online simulator and educational tool that helps students understand the process of sustainable planning to balance land-uses such as agriculture, oil and gas and forestry with ecological integrity.

• ClimateKids Environment Canada site that includes games and activities about climate science, impacts, actions, plastics, oceans, and energy.

• CBC Kids Games, videos, quizzes, and more.

• Kids of Kayele An online game that uses video, photos, trivia and interactive game play to teach students about global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues. 

• WASH Games Online games on water, sanitation, and hygiene for grades 5-12

• Partners FOR the Saskatchewan River Basin: Kids’ Activities

Lesson Ideas:

1. Go to discoverwater.org and work through the different activities and quizzes. Print and have students fill out a Science Notebook as they complete each section.

2. Have students play the Kids of Kayele or WASH online games. Then do the follow-up activities in the Kids of Kayele Educator’s Guide or WASH Games Lesson Plan.

3. Register online for Alberta Tomorrow to access lesson plans.

Lesson Plans, Worksheets, Resources

Science experiment on soil erosion

• Helen Schuler Nature Centre: Natural Leaders Project - Home Eco Challenge

• Alberta Council for Environmental Education: Resources for Parents

• Inside Education learning resources

• Project WET free at-home learning

• Canadian Wildlife Federation: Lesson Plans

• Connecting With Nature: An educational guide for grades seven and eight 

• Wavemakers Teaching Resources

• EarthLabs

• Scholastic: Free Lesson Plans 

Lesson Ideas:

1. Build a hands-on model of a watershed using things you find around the house (here’s an example from EarthLabs or do a Google search for inspiration). Consider landforms, waterways, people, plants, animals, and infrastructure. Maybe you want to add snow or ice cubes to the headwaters and watch how it melts and flows downstream. Be creative! Take a picture and tag Oldman Watershed Council on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram! 

2. Complete lessons 2 and 7 (or any others you like) from the Connecting with Nature educational guide.

3. Do a Five-Minute Field Trip in your yard.

4. Conduct a home water audit. Then, go to City of Lethbridge Water Conservation webpage and make a plan to reduce water use in your home. How much water did you conserve? 

5. Do the Science Experiment on Soil Erosion. (This requires time for the seeds to grow, so start it a couple of weeks in advance).

Social Media and Virtual Learning

• Helen Schuler Nature Centre Outdoor Adventure Club Saturday videos

• Inside Education: Water Wednesday, Tech Thursday, posts, videos, tours…

• Agriculture in the Classroom Alberta: virtual farm tours, lesson plans, etc.

• Activities for Kids - Southern Alberta: local Facebook group

• Calgary Zoo Daily Dose videos and activity PDFs

• Skype a Scientist 

• Exploring By the Seat of Your Pants

• Outward Explorers Creature Features, family outdoor guides, and mindfulness videos

• Audible Stories Instantly stream stories in six different languages for free on desktop, laptop, phone, or tablet for as long as schools are closed.

Nature / Wildlife Cams

• Ellis Bird Farm Owl Cam Ellie and Albert are resident great-horned owls who have nested at Ellis Bird Farm near Lacombe, AB for several years.

• Parks Canada wildlife webcams and remote cameras

• explore.org/livecams

• CBC Kids list of animal cams

Lesson Ideas:

1. Choose a livecam to watch for 10-15 minutes. Write a story narrating a part of the animals’ life.

2. Research the natural history of the animal(s) you watched. Where do they live? What do they eat? How do they move? What dangers or threats do they face? What are some of their special adaptations? Make a poster and present it to your family. 

3. If you have a birdfeeder, spend 10 minutes each day watching and identifying birds. Keep a tally of different species you see each day. Learn about those birds, and share with your family. Using resources from Schoolyard Bird Blitz, prepare to do your own Backyard Bird Blitz with your family one day in May.

Videos, Films, Documentaries

• OWC Videos or YouTube channel: Watch free videos about the Oldman watershed, OWC, and what you can do to care for the place we live.

• The Water Brothers Award-winning Canadian TV series about two eco-adventurer brothers who travel the world to explore humans’ relationship with water. Watch episodes online, download teacher’s guides, or check out their interactive learning portal, Dive Deeper.

• Banff Mountain Film Festival films online for free

• National Film Board of Canada: Education

Lesson Ideas:

1. Learn about an issue in your watershed (use the videos and resources above). Research the issue, and come up with one solution that you could implement. Use this Student Workbook to organize your solution, including a timeline and budget. You may like to connect with a fellow student and work on this together. (Students in Gr. 7-12, consider submitting your finished proposal to next year’s Caring for our Watersheds contest for a chance to win cash - ask OWC’s Education Program Manager how!). 

2. Watch an episode from The Water Brothers, then explore the Dive Deeper story for that episode.

Maps & Data

• Oldman Watershed maps: Current and historical maps of our watershed

• Canadian Geographic: Protect Your Watershed Enter your address and find out what watershed you live in.

• Alberta River Basins: Interactive map with data on precipitation, river flow, water quality, and advisories

• Saskatchewan River Basin map See where the water from the Oldman watershed ends up, and how we are connected to other watersheds in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Lesson Ideas:

1. Watersheds are like those Ukrainian nesting dolls: smaller watersheds exist within larger ones. On a piece of paper, draw a small circle to represent the watershed that drains into your nearest lake, pond, creek, or river (or stormdrain!). Draw a circle around it to represent the bigger water body your local creek drains into (e.g. Oldman River). Keep drawing larger circles around those for each bigger watershed, until you get to the ocean (and if you like, Earth!). How many circles did you end up with? Illustrate and colour your paper!

2. Draw a map of your home and its connection to water. Include the nearest body of water (lake, creek, river), including where it starts and the path it takes to the ocean. Older students may make your map to scale.

3. Open the Oldman watershed hydrological map (you may wish to print it). Use a piece of string to trace the path the Oldman River takes from its beginning in the headwaters to where it joins with the Bow River to form the South Saskatchewan River. Then, measure the length of string and use the map scale to calculate the length of the river in kilometres. Research the actual length of the river - how accurate were you?

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

• University of Alberta MOOCs: Dino 101, Bugs 101, Mountains 101, Indigenous Canada, and more!

• mooc.org Free online courses from edx.org 

• coursera.org Free online courses

• Cornell Bird Academy: free online birding course