The Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival (HMKCWF) has for 20 years, been an annual outdoor Fall event that informs and inspires elementary students 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.
We are the premiere program of local charity, the Friends of Ecological and Environmental Learning.
We also provide information, guidance and resources for educators to use in integrating engaging water stewardship lessons into their classes throughout the year. Recommended resources and Teachers' Festival Guides are available on our Teachers tab.
Our programs are adapting through climate change and to reach more regional families through sharing our learning activities at public events and smaller summer Festivals organized with partners. 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 Community programs and our linked Waterheroes on-line/hybrid initiatives.
Our programs are offered by a collaborative community, thanks to the generosity of volunteers, partner programs and sponsors. Please contact us for more information or to get involved!
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve set tentative 2026 dates for our main event, the in-person Fall Festival held at Kinark Outdoor Centre ~ Tuesday October 6th and Wednesday October 7th. We look forward to involving more students and schools should the resources required for this be confirmed ~ thanks…
Since 2005, the Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival has inspired more than 16,800 elementary students to become water stewards. This year, we’re looking forward to celebrating some of the key volunteers, partner organizations and supporters who’ve made significant contributions over the past two decades. We’ll do this through our website, Facebook…
Thanks to more than 150 volunteers, 12 educating partners and a growing community of donors of funds and resources, we reached over 1000 elementary children and 200 teachers &/or parents at our 2024 Fall Festival. This more than doubled our attendance from the previous year. We reached even more children…
The Haliburton-Muskoka-Kawartha Children’s Water Festival acknowledges that our events are hosted and our education about watersheds based within the traditional territories of Anishinabek peoples, the Ojibway and Wendat / Huron Nations that now also include communities of the Mohawk, the Pottawatomi and the Métis Nations ~ those within the Williams…
