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National Estuaries Day Activity Ideas for in the School
Lessons
- Integrate estuary-related issues into lesson plans.
- Organize an art or essay contest with an estuary theme.
- Show videos about your estuary.
- Read stories with environmental themes, such as The Lorax by Dr. Seuss.
- Invite speakers to talk about estuary issues, such as pollution, habitat loss, water quality, or living resources.
- Link up with another school or community — coastal or inland — in a distant part of the United States or the world and collaborate on an estuarine awareness activity or action project.
Educating Others
- Raise awareness about estuaries and conservation issues in your school and/or community on National Estuaries Day.
- Have students discover all the ways in which they and the school are interconnected with estuaries — how you need it to survive and how actions help or harm estuarine ecosystems, no matter where you live.
- Organize a pledge drive to encourage citizens to help conserve and restore your local estuary.
- Challenge other classes and/or schools to see who can sign up the most pledges.
- Hold an environmental fair, with proceeds going to creation of a school environmental organization.
- Ask an elected official to come speak about local efforts to restore or protect an estuary.
- Start an environmental club or newsletter for your school.
- Have students help install water-saving devices in the school restrooms and then put up stickers to remind students to conserve water.
Outdoor Activities
- Undertake a wildlife habitat project to benefit migratory species that need estuaries and the ocean to survive.
- Plant trees and/or native vegetation in the schoolyard or at a site in your estuary.
- Set up an organic garden at your school, complete with a compost pile.
- Survey how many different kinds of plants, animals, and insects live in your schoolyard.
- Build birdhouses and feeders for the schoolyard or your backyard.
- Organize a cleanup of the schoolyard, a nearby beach, or a local park.
- Throw a birthday party for your estuary.
- Organize a parade of students dressed as their favorite estuary critters.
- Adopt a local stream or wetland and protect it from pollution.
Arts and Crafts
- Organize an estuary picture contest dramatizing the best (beauty) and worst (pollution) of nature.
- Encourage local businesses to put up pictures in their windows.
- Make a paper tree on the classroom wall with each leaf giving a tip on how to protect your estuary.
- Build a "wetlands in a pan" to demonstrate how water filters through wetlands.
- Have students perform a play or puppet show with an estuary theme.
- Make nature cards to wish parents and friends a happy National Estuaries Day.
- Write and sing songs about your estuary.
Field Trips
- Visit sites in your estuary region to learn about its wildlife and fisheries, geography, environmental problems, and the ways people use the estuary.
- Survey types and quantities of trash that wash up on beaches or lake shores, and organize a cleanup.
- Visit a nature center, natural history museum, or a wilderness area.
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Last Updated on: 08-02-2012
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