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. 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. Steward’s Ship is set to sail in April of 2024 at the third annual Mud Fest. We hope to have you along for the maiden voyage.
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.
Downloadable resources coming soon!