Activity Plans

These activity plans are for working with youth in preschool through middle school to help them learn about stormwater runoff, rain gardens, and other ways to prevent water pollution. They are meant to be used in small groups such as 4-H clubs, or scout troops. The plans contain basic facilitator information, but can be used in conjunction with the other information about rain gardens and stormwater runoff from this website.

The suggested ages for these plans are just general guidelines. In a mixed age scenario, such as a 4-H Club or family with youth in middle and elementary school, I would suggest starting with the middle school lessons and cutting out activities as needed to make them work for your group.

Please note that the title of each section is also a link to those plans. Also, the elementary and middle school plans include an activity to create a PSA, there are two example PSAs near the bottom of this page.

If you plan to use or have used these plans with your 4-H Club, Scout Troop, homeschool group, family, or other group of youth, I would appreciate it if you would take the time to fill out this survey.

Middle School Activity Plans

(https://tinyurl.com/raingardenmiddle)

These activities were created with the idea of doing one activity per day on three days, but could be modified to fit a different schedule

Activity 1: Stormwater runoff demonstration and rain garden experiment.

Activity 2: Planning a rain garden.

Activity 3: Learning more ways to prevent water pollution and creating a Public Service Announcement.

Elementary School Activity Plans

(https://tinyurl.com/raingardenelementary)

These activities were created with the idea of doing one activity per day on two days, but could be modified to fit a different schedule.

Activity 1: Stormwater runoff demonstration and rain garden experiment.

Activity 2: Learning more ways to prevent water pollution and creating a Public Service Announcement.

Note: These plans cover many of the steps of the Girl Scout Brownies Wonders of Water Journey, including a Take Action Project

Preschool and Kindergarten Activity Plans

(https://tinyurl.com/raingardenpreK-K

These activity plans are intended to be done in one session.

Activities:

Rainy day rhymes

Experiment about water runoff and absorption

Planting plants

Clapping thunderstorm

Note: these plans cover many of the steps of the Girl Scout Daisy Gardening Petals

Evaluating learning:

If you would like to evaluate learning from the elementary or middle school activity plans, here is a link to pre and post activity surveys which you could ask the youth to complete. Alternately the lesson plans do contain discussion prompts at the end.

Example Public Service Announcements

Here are two example PSAs ( a video and poster) that were created by groups who were using the above activity plans.