Pre-College Programs

Oakland University is proud to have celebrated the twelfth annual Clinton River Water Festival on May eighteenth, two thousand and eighteen. For the twelve hundred fifth grade students at the Clinton River Water Shed, it was a day full of fun as well as learning about the importance of water and impact it has on our environment.

Water Festival!

The reason why I volunteer at the water festival for the second time is because really of the educational opportunities and experiences that kids get to have here. We get to see them learn about the Clinton River and it’s important.

The water festival continues to engage and provide the fifth graders with valuable information to make it possible for them to ensure Michigan’s water ways can be safe and clean.

The festival is also used to compliment the science curriculum taught at their schools.

I bring my students to the water festival every year because they take away things that we learn in the classroom and they bring things back that we didn’t learn in the classroom and it helps integrate our lesson and they bring back knowledge to how to keep our water clean for our future. These children are our future for our water and I think it’s really important.

I teach fifth grade and science and all the other subjects as well but we decided that with the curriculum that we are teaching right now that it would be really important to come out and get the kids out of the classroom and learn more about water and how it’s important to our community.

So one of the bigger things is water conservation and how important it is to our Michigan communities. Obviously we have so many lakes around here and all the issues that we’re running into with pollution and they were just talking about zebra mussels and invasive species so we’re trying to educate the kids on how they can help our community.

Students actively participated in an array of indoor and outdoor activities. Here’s a close up of what they experienced.

So this is a lake in Oakland County and we kinda had to go in there and clean that up and you guys probably don’t know what gabions are.

She has a more subtle outfit, right? Yeah in this species it happens at this time of the year. What’s that special occasion that need to fight each other for?

Particles that are in there get a little bit bigger, a little bit heavier and they change the PH. It causes them to settle down.

It’s bouncing off of those roads, yeah. What happens when it hits the soil?

One of the main things we would like them to be able to learn is about being safe on the water. It’s a very big priority for the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard Auxiliary. We want them to go out and have fun, enjoy themselves on the water but we want them to come back safe and happy.

This allows us to communicate. This is the speaker to listen.

And then the thrusters are on the back and there’s one on top to make it go down and those help make it go forward and backward obviously in the back.

Five student posters were selected that express their excitement and concerns about the Clinton River Water Shed. Let’s hear what three of the five winner had to say.

I think it does make it easier doing the hands-on activities and I like doing, I like learning about all of the animals and insects that we have in our rivers here in Michigan. I thought that was cool.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed was um learning some um we were kinda like doing this thing and we kinda saw this turtle and it was kinda interesting. I got to feel what the turtle felt like and it had kinda like a soft shell and kinda rough.

I’m trying to teach people that, just to save water. Like in these pictures the water is on and when you’re brushing your teeth but you turn the water off when you’re actually brushing and like this one you um when you’re washing, you can always turn off the water. That saves a lot more water and when you’re washing the dishes you could just use one little tub, you don’t have to keep the water running and keep draining. That wastes a lot of water.

If we don’t have any water it’s not like our world isn’t gonna get any better.

Since two thousand and seven, there’s been group of dedicated professionals from different disciplines that present and share their knowledge of water and the environment while making this festival spectacular.

What I’m hoping they take away from it is an understanding of when you turn on the tap or you flush the toilet that where that waste water goes actually goes somewhere. It’s not just disappeared. Basically, be aware of where things are going.

I really love this Clinton River Water Festival here. It’s a great way to get students involved. It gets students as young as fifth grade interested in water related things and maybe, ya know, they’ll go into high school thinking I wanna go into career related to water but if not, we need great people to get involved in the community, get involved in river clean ups, get involved in counsel meetings talking about water related issues and just generally being involved with water. It’s a resource we need to learn how to protect and conserve.

With the passion and commitment and dedication of the planning committee members, all our great sponsors and volunteers, we can say again the Clinton River Water Festival at Oakland University was a great educational event for the students of the students of the Clinton River Water Shed.