The Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival (HMKCWF) has, for 13 years, been an annual outdoor Fall event that informs and inspires elementary students of this region to become water stewards in their homes, classrooms and communities. Children have fun while visiting a variety of hands-on activity stations where they learn about all things water, while making ecological connections to the natural world around them.
Since 2012, we have provided information, guidance and resources for Teachers to use in integrating engaging water stewardship lessons into their classes throughout the year. In 2021 we developed Water Week: an updated set of such resources, all available under the Teachers tab.
We are adapting our programs through the pandemic and climate change; in 2022 we revived our in-person Fall event with updated safety protocols and have started to develop and launched a series of water festival outdoor activities for families, such as storyboard walks at public parks and community events. We continue to combine experiential activities with messages relevant to youth's daily lives, through which they can 'soak up' knowledge on the properties, uses, connections and importance of water through these and our Waterheroes on-line programs.
Our programming has been offered free of charge since 2005, thanks to the generosity of volunteers, partner programs and sponsors. Please contact us for more information or to get involved!
Our main event, the in-person Festival held at Kinark Outdoor Centre will be Tuesday October 1st & Wednesday October 2nd, 2024. We look forward to returning to a 2-day festival and involving more students should the resources needed for this be confirmed this winter ~ thanks to returning and new volunteers, partners and sponsors !
Our fantastic volunteers, donors, partners and participating schools and families came together to more than double the number of students attending our Children’s Water Festival this year.
We’re happy to share highlights of how our volunteers, program partners, financial and in-kind supporters together made a positive difference in 2023. Together we offered engaging, hands-on activities for children of the region inspiring present and future water stewardship. See this link for more details; https://hmkwaterfestival.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2023-HMKCWF-Final-Report-short.pdf
Thanks to support from all sorts of Water Heroes in the region, we’ll be running our Childrens Water Festival for grade 4-6 elementary students at Kinark Outdoor Education Centre on Thursday October 5th next week. We could still use a few more volunteers to support fun water stewardship learning experiences…
