Activity Centres
There are so many great activities to see it can be hard to choose which ones to visit.
Below you will find many of the activities, and to see which activities most closely are aligned to your class you can download the curriculum connections. Don't forget to visit our Guest Activity Centres with incredible Water Experts and Educators too!
Download the curriculum connections:
Activities
Summary: Students will have the opportunity to examine
how much water they use while brushing their teeth and
compare water consumption using a variety of techniques.
How much water can you save twice a day?
Festival Theme: Water Conservation
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Students will learn about the sewage system and why it is important to only flush the three P’s- pee, poop and (toilet) paper down the toilet. Unfortunately, many people flush lots of other things down the toilet. Flushing these items down the toilet causes home pipes to clog, wastes water, can cause damage to our sewer system and can contaminate our rivers and lakes.
Festival Theme: Water Technology and Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: This giant floor map will take participants on a canoe trip from Peterborough to Curve Lake First Nation. As participants roll the dice they will move their team’s birch bark canoe through the Kawartha Lakes while answering question about water ecology, local First Nations history and reconciliation.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: To understand how dissolved oxygen levels impact aquatic life, students consider the metaphor of the Limbo Bar. How many will survive when levels are low? How many more are successful when levels are high? Start the music and lets find out!
Festival Theme: Water Science
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Why was Monday in pioneer days Laundry Day? Students will try doing laundry using old methods and equipment and compare water consumption to the present day.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: An activity to introduce safe household hazardous waste (HHW) disposal practices. HHW items (cleaners, oils, poisons etc.) and pictures or models of a garbage can, HHW Depot and sink. Participants decide where the HHW items should go when people are finished with them.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Through an interactive game, students will learn about fish migration and the many obstacles that fish may need to overcome in order to complete their life cycle.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Students will have the opportunity to test their memories, and burn off some steam, as they race to each of the four Asian Carps threatening the Great Lakes.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Students simulate daily household routines and evaluate the impacts of their everyday actions on the environment. They investigate the rate of water flow, discover simple home water saving technologies and hypothesize about the impacts these technologies have on the environment.
Festival Theme: Water Conservation
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Created by GreenUP’s Ecology Park this interactive water display introduces students to issues around shoreline erosion, water quality and nature’s own cleaning methods.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Students can manipulate models to discover what controls the direction and speed of water. Students learn the concepts of slope and angle.
Festival Theme: Water Science
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Students will learn about the importance of streams in urban areas and the importance of plants along a stream and the role they play in providing habitat.
Festival Theme: Water Science and Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Students become detectives with the task of finding some of the most common leaks in a home’s water system by using a water meter.
Festival Theme: Water Technology and Water Conservation
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: How much water do we use for a five-minute shower? Students compare early 19th century bathing methods to modern methods. Even modern methods are not the same when it comes to water consumption. What can we do to save water when having a shower? Students enter a model shower to see the difference when a simple technological water-saving device is employed.
Festival Theme: Water Conservation
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: The OPP Marine Unit is responsible for enforcement of Boating Regulations on non-federal waterways, and for search and rescue. Officers will discuss boating safety and regulations with students.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Passive activity
Summary: Through this activity students will learn about the hazards of commercial oil spills and experience how hard it is to clean oil from birds. Additionally, students will discuss local problems from oil that enters waterways from household sources.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Children in some parts of the world have to walk for hours to fetch water for the family’s daily use. In this team relay, students race through an obstacle course with a bucket of water to experience what it is like for children on their water fetching journeys.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: In this activity students pretend to be osprey collecting fish to feed their baby osprey. Students will learn about osprey and how they catch their food for survival. This activity also introduces the concept of food chains and how contaminated fish can affect animals that eat them.
Festival Theme: Water Science
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: This activity will introduce students to the unique adaptations of the North American River Otter. Through costumes children will compare their own body parts in comparison with the adaptations that otters have for living in water.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Students will examine the importance of water to the survival and success of early settlers. Taking a trip back in time, students can investigate how farm buildings were located near a water source, how settlers obtained the water needed for animals and the family and how much water was required. Discover hand power and the role of the child in settler families. Help us fetch a bucket!
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Through a hands-on model students will learn about how the force of water is used to generate clean, reliable and renewable energy.
Festival Theme: Water Technology
Activity Type: Passive activity
Summary: Donning Velcro Vests, students pretend to be water droplets rolling through the watershed. See what water picks up as it travels. Work backwards as a detective to find out where the different materials would be found in a real watershed.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: How does a toilet work? Students examine how the mechanisms in an ordinary household device works and the difference between water-saver toilets and regular-flow toilets. How does the required amount of water come back every time?
Festival Theme: Water Conservation
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Icy roads can be dangerous, salting helps to protect vehicles on the road. However, salt for de-icing can be detrimental to the environment. Through understanding how salt functions and it’s movement through the water system students will learn about it’s use as well as alternative solutions for ice management.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: By finding and answering hidden water-related questions students will solidify learning, and after completing all the questions can receive a prize from our Aqua Quest treasure chest!
Festival Theme: All Themes
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Watch water trickle through the sewage pipes into the septic bed in a rural waste water scenario. Where do the wastewater and solid wastes go if one is not connected to the municipal wastewater system?
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Students perform tests on various everyday liquids to understand the concept of acidity. They then discuss what factors (e.g. acid rain) may change the acidity of lakes and how changes in acidity impact lake environments.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Volunteer Sheet
Summary: Students will be able to put their water knowledge to the test in this game show styled learning opportunity.
Festival Theme: All Themes
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Using an aquarium to represent a water habitat it is illustrated how pollutants can harm frogs as they absorb pollutants through their skin. It is designed to encourage students to help keep streams and ponds free of pollution and teaches children how to identify potential pollutants that should not be put into the water systems.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: Our watersheds are shared by many other creatures, students will act as hatchlings and get a immersive understanding of the risks to aquatic life. Students will gain an understanding of what is a Species-at-Risk, and human's influence on different stages of a turtles life.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: Created by the Peterborough Utility Commission, this Activity Centre is a model of a water distribution system similar to that of Peterborough. Water is drawn from the Otonabee River through a miniature water network, and pumped through various components of the system.
Festival Theme: Water Technology
Activity Type: Passive activity
Summary: Students will learn about the importance of water for our bodies. We need water to live, and it is important to drink water when we are thirsty.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: This activity centre provides students with an understanding of plastic in our waterways, its impacts on wildlife, and how our daily choices can influence the environment. Pretending to be aquatic animals, students will race to eat algae – but there is a catch, as microplastics can look a lot like food.
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Learning through active play
Summary: A three dimensional working mobile of the Otonabee River that will look at the history of the river and watch it as it gets more polluted. Then the children have to figure out how to clean it up!
Festival Theme: Water Protection
Activity Type: Passive activity
Summary: Join TRACKS to explore the interconnected world under the water. This interactive activity will allow students to see how all water beings are connected to each other and rely on one another in a healthy, balanced underwater ecosystem. Students will come to understand the sacredness of water to all beings including, but not limited to, humans through Indigenous storytelling and a hands-on activity.
Festival Theme: Water Attitude
Activity Type: Hands - On Activity
Summary: A three dimensional working mobile of the Otonabee River that will look at the history of the river and watch it as it gets more polluted. Then the children have to figure out how to clean it up!
Festival Theme: Water Conservation
Activity Type: Passive activity
Summary: Students will be introduced to the life cycle of Canadian Wild Rice. Students will then be given the opportunity to pull on a pair of moccasins and ‘dance’ on rice to remove the chaff so it can be eaten.
Festival Theme: Water Attitudes
Activity Type: Learning through active play