WaterWise Program & WRAPS

The City of Lawrence sponsors WaterWise kits for area fourth graders who have completed a series of water conservation explorations. Teachers are provided with a curriculum set that leads students through an evaluation of their own water conservation practices. At the end of the project each student gets a WaterWise kit containing 10 resources for them to share with their families. Among the items are a high efficiency showerhead, a kitchen aerator, a bathroom aerator, a flow rate test bage, and an Adventures in Green Valley CD-Rom.

Alison Reber, KVHA Executive Director, visited with 60 some fourth graders at Hillcrest Elementary about Kansas’ WRAPS Program and source water protection. Students were especially interested in how the Kansas River and Clinton Lake are used for water supply. Last fall they completed a social studies unit on Kansas’ river systems and a science unit on the properties of water. A large foam-cored satellite map of the Wakarusa watershed remained at the school on loan for several weeks in order to provide teachers and students a chance to study it at length.

WRAPS groups may want to consider how classroom maps can augment their existing outreach strategies.