Living With Water
Living With Water is a place-based environmental education experience tailored for children in third grade. This program connects the exhibits at the Louisiana Children’s Museum with a scalable curriculum advancing water literacy by highlighting the ecosystem services provided by wetlands and explaining the science behind the varied innovative adaptations that humans and animals have employed to help them survive in wet environments. This program offers resources for a turn-key classroom curriculum meeting fifteen 3rd grade Next Generation Science Standards, as well as a kit for a self-guided experience for museum visitors between 3rd and 6th grade, and a mobile exhibit encapsulating the LCM experience, Steward’s Ship. This vessel guides elementary aged students in learning about the ways plants, animals, and humans have adapted to thrive in the volatile wetlands of South Louisiana.
For more information on Living With Water, contact our Education Outreach Coordinator, Alahna Moore at amoore@lcm.org.
Classroom Experience
Through classroom instruction students learn about the ecosystem services provided by wetlands, Indigenous adaptations to the landscape, modern systems that require water management. Twice per semester, LCM staff bring biofacts and other interactive and performative elements to the student’s traditional classroom learning environment. Through this program, students are given the opportunity to steer their learning experience based on their own interests and contributions to the program.
Museum Experience
While at the museum, students act as engineers who design and test their own “Swamp in a Sack” on LCM’s 14-foot sedimentation table. Budding naturalists will learn to safely interact with and identify wildlife in their natural habitat within our 8-acre landscape and Little Lagoon. Port directors sort through imports and exports and examine the way that foods get from a farm to our kitchen tables. Living with Water is a central theme throughout our museum, and this program provides the tools and vocabulary needed for older elementary students to fully engage with the space.
Outreach
Steward’s Ship is a new, mobile exhibit that brings the wonders of the Louisiana Children’s Museum to your classroom, library, or community center. With generous support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Steward’s Ship is designed to resemble a shrimper’s boat and features tactile panels, interactive audio and video activities, and games that engage young learners in imaginative play while illustrating scientific concepts and challenges unique to the Louisiana Gulf Coast. Interested in hosting this exhibit? Contact us to learn how.
Resources
Participating students are provided with Water Journals so that we can make their learning visible! Through open-ended challenges and drawing prompts, these journals provide students with the space to document their ideas and the knowledge to help them apply their lessons towards solving real world problems.
RESOURCES:
- Living With Water LA DOE academic standards overview for third grade (PDF)
- Living With Water educator slide deck (editable PowerPoint)
- Living With Water Student Water Journals (English version; PDF)
- Living With Water Student Water Journals (Spanish version; PDF)
- Living With Water Activity Prompt Posters 11×17 format (English version; editable PowerPoint)
- Living With Water Activity Prompt Posters 11×17 format (English version; PDF)
- Living With Water Activity Prompt Posters 11×17 format (Spanish version; editable PowerPoint)
- Living With Water Activity Prompt Posters 11×17 format (Spanish version; PDF)
- Living With Water Museum Visit Guide (accompanies Student Water Journals; PDF)
- Steward’s Ship mobile museum exhibit information sheet (PDF)
- Recommended reading: Over in the Wetlands by Caroline Starr Rose (please include cover image on page).
- Coastal Video Series created by Greater New Orleans, Inc., in partnership with the Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation & Louisiana Children’s Museum. This series of animated videos helps Louisiana children to learn more about current coastal restoration efforts.