Spring Water

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: A couple of days ago, we began following the travels of The Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran that gets 68 percent of its buoyancy from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles. It set sail from San Francisco on March 20, bound for Sydney, Australia, on a mission to bring attention to the belief that "waste is fundamentally a design flaw" (one of many bullet points in The Plastiki's philosophy.

As of this morning, they were 4 days and 265 nautical miles into their 11,000-mile journey. The boat's mast is made of of recycled aluminum and its sail is recycled PET cloth . The project's Web site is AmAzInG. There's an especially cool feature where you can take a tour of a computer generated 3D model of the boat. The kids spent quite a bit of time exploring it this morning.

H2Oh!: Today is World Water Day so we spent most of the day learning more about the importance of water conservation.

According to National Geographic, nearly one billion people around the world don't have clean drinking water, and 2.6 billion still lack basic sanitation. It's estimated that by 2050, one-third of the people on Earth may lack a clean, secure source of water.

Through April 2, National Geographic has made available a special issue of "Water: Our Thirsty World" online. It's definitely worth taking a peek - even if you only have time to check out the great photos. Coincidentally (?) we received a hard copy of it in the mail today (we're NatGeo subscribers). We paged through it a bit and we'll be back to it in the days and weeks to come.

Next up: a Water Conservation for kids Web site from the Utah state government. There, the kids took turns reading water conservation facts aloud. Then we hopped to an online game from the folks at Seattle Public Utilities. Called Water Busters, it featured characters named Bert the Salmon and Phil Dumpster. In the game, you followed Phil around his home, trying to locate places water was being wasted. CJ LOVED this game. (Look out the window of the room Phil's in - you can see the Space Needle!)

For completing the conservation tasks, the kids were rewarded with a Waterbuster certificate, which we printed out. CJ was especially proud of his new status as "a top Water Smart student." We also printed out Bert & Phil's Waterbusters! checklist where kids are instructed to "find out how Water Smart you are by answering the questions below and counting the 'Yes!' answers for your score.' CJ took it upon himself to answer the 16 questions (which also involved peppering me with questions like how many gallons per flush our toilets are and if our shower heads are water efficient).
A Canadian Web site, EcoKids, had a number of fun and informative features, including a Water Conservation Around the House game. We also checked out the North Wales' (Pennsylvania) kids' water conservation Web site, where the Water Wizard was featured in a trio of games.

Water Use it Wisely's Kids' site had links to several water conservation activities and games, including The Water Family. A UK based Web site, the kids got a kick out of it - they got to create avatars to represent each of us, and then our family played out various water conservation scenarios.

The EPA had a list of links to water-related educational sites for kids we could spend the next couple of weeks exploring. For today, we limited ourselves to the Drinking Water & Ground water activities.

WISHFUL THINKING: The kids are still on a heightened dandelion awareness kick since reading "Dandelion Adventures" last week. Today during our Kirby walk/park outing they were actively seeking dandelion "wishes" - ones with parachutes ready to blow out into the atmosphere.

Also, grassy hills were just begging to be rolled down, and rocks were asking to be climbed.

SILLY STORY: While the kids were in yoga class, I popped over to the nearby Columbia City branch of Seattle Public Library system. There, I scored several DVDs and some books, including "What Do Parents Do? (when you're not home)."

The kids read the book (by Jeanie Franz Ransom with illustrations by Cyd Moore) on the way home from yoga and loved its silliness. Colorful illustrations show a mom and dad acting very kid-like in the absence of their children. They jumped on beds, ate huge quantities of horrible food, dressed up the dog, watched too much TV, and played too many video games (CJ's favorite part, as the TV in the illustration showed a Super Mario like character). Cute story.