Sacred Heart, Kelly Elementary students launch miniature canoes into the Red as part of River of Dreams
Jun. 9—On May 23, fourth- and fifth-grade students at Sacred Heart in East Grand Forks and fifth-grade students at Kelly Elementary in Grand Forks launched hand-painted miniature canoes into the Red River as part of the International Water Institute's "River of Dreams" program.
River of Dreams is inspired by "Paddle-to-the-Sea," a 1941 children's book by Holling C. Holling that follows a small canoe on its own river journey, with the dream of paddling to the sea. The program engages students to better understand their watershed through reading, writing, art and geography.
As part of the program, students experience virtual tours of their watershed, see where their local river flows and visualize its watershed. Each student also decorates trackable 14-inch cedar canoes and writes a short story describing their dream for the canoe's river journey. A web page created for each canoe includes the date and location of launch, along with a picture of the canoe and the student's "dream" story. Canoes found by area residents can be logged into the database by following instructions and recording the unique ID number that accompanies each canoe.
River of Dreams this past school year reached 1,500 students at 44 schools throughout the Red River Basin. Students started by reading "Paddle-to-the-Sea" and then imagined their own canoe flowing downstream, while learning river terms such as headwaters, tributary, confluence and mouth.
View decorated canoes, read dream stories and see where the canoes have been discovered at
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Funding for River of Dreams was provided by the Red Lake Watershed District as a member of the Red River Watershed Management Board and the Minnesota Legislative Clean Water Fund for schools in Minnesota. Funding for schools in North Dakota was provided by the North Dakota Red River Joint Water Resource District and the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.
In addition to River of Dreams, the International Water Institute's River Watch program has been active in Red River Basin high schools since 1995. River Watch students collect water quality data, explore rivers from the seat of a kayak, identify macroinvertebrates and share information with their peers. Currently, there are 25 active River Watch teams and more than 300 River Watch students in the Red River Basin.
The International Water Institute is a nonprofit organization formed to foster watershed stewardship through leadership in decision support, environmental monitoring and education programming.
More info:
internationalwaterinstitute.org
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