Water Moves is a hands-on game that promotes systems thinking, the foundation of scientific problem-solving.
Water Moves Throughout Our Community
Have you ever thought about how water moves throughout Tallahassee and our surrounding area? How does it get from our water-shed to our homes? How does runoff and pollution affect the water we drink? Where does our water go after we use it?
Our water system is diverse and complex. Many external systems, both man-made and natural, affect how we are able to interact with our water on a daily basis. And what we do or don’t do now may very well dictate how we are able to interact with our water in the future.
Focusing on these issues, WFSU created a hands-on game that asks kids to review the natural and manmade systems that dictate how our water moves throughout our community. Kids play WATER MOVES in teams; the team that builds a system to move water to their respective bucket the fastest (and often most efficiently) wins the game. The task may sound simple, but it involves many challenges – completing puzzles, gathering tools, team work, and problem solving to complete the mission.
The Game
Through a grant from PBS KIDS, WFSU was able to present WATER MOVES, an outdoor game involving water and puzzle solving, to kids in the Tallahassee area.
WATER MOVES, asks children between the ages of 7 and 11 to think about ways water moves within our local environment and community. The game is set up outdoors; it incorporates sprinklers, a kiddie pool, and imagination! It encourages kids to think up creative ways to move water using a variety of random objects to build appropriate tools.
Representatives from the City of Tallahassee and TAPP attended our kick-off WATER MOVES event on May 10, 2014. They helped to explain the science behind our local water system.
Pilot Station Project
WFSU was chosen as a PBS KIDS pilot station to create a ‘street game’ that embodied the principles of systems thinking. The reason to incorporate systems thinking, in this sense, was to encourage kids to think about how systems in our world behave, how they interact with their environment, and how they can have influence on outside systems. Kids were encouraged to think about the relationships of different components within the game and how to leverage those relationships to their advantage, resulting in a win for their team.
For complete information on how to recreate this event (for other PBS stations, or anyone who is interested), please read our Water Moves Project Report.
EcoAdventure – Water Moves Into and Out of Your Home and Watershed
WFSU made a game out of learning how water moves through our community. Producer Rob Diaz de Villegas takes it a step further as he discovers how all of our local waterways connect and eventually lead back to our drinking water. This post kicks off a summer series that will follow water’s journey from our homes to the coast.
More on the WFSU Ecology Blog
- June 18, 2014 – Water Moves: Into and Out of Your Home and Watershed (including an EcoAdventure video featuring Water Moves)
- June 26, 2014 – Lake Report: Leon County’s Cleanest and Dirtiest Lakes
- September 19, 2014 – The Tallahassee SciGirls play the Water Moves game, learning about Tallahassee’s connection to Wakulla Springs. They then visit Wakulla Springs and Leon Sinks, where water enters the aquifer and feeds the spring system.