photo by: Nick Krug

Sydney Owens, a fifth grader at Eudora Elementary, leaves a trail of water as she excitedly takes a handoff from classmate Bailey Shoemaker during a water hauling exercise on Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 near the Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum at Clinton Lake. About 700 fifth-graders from Lawrence and Eudora visited the park for the festival where they learned about the importance of clean water, water conservation, water safety and other topics.

Tad the tadpole may not play fetch or enjoy a good belly rub, but he’s quickly won the hearts of the four kids gathered around his habitat for the day — a shallow, water-filled container populated with algae, tiny mosquitofish and the empty shells of zebra mussels — under the shade of a shelter at Clinton Lake’s Bloomington East Park.

“He’s just a tad shy,” deadpans Karma Matchette, a fifth-grader at Lawrence’s Prairie Park Elementary.

Matchette, along with approximately 700 fifth-graders across Lawrence and Douglas County, journeyed to Clinton Lake on Friday to learn about water, wildlife and our role in protecting it.

The annual event, dubbed the Douglas County Water Festival, is a joint effort led by the Douglas County Conservation District, with funding from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council, and hosted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Throughout the park and inside the nearby Wakarusa River Valley Heritage Museum are dozens of learning stations and exhibits designed to engage students in one very important question: Why does every drop count?

“This is where it starts,” says Sue Ann Funk, education and outreach coordinator for the county’s Conservation District.

As adults, it’s all too easy for us to become disconnected from our environment, she explains. She and other festival organizers hope, by presenting information in a hands-on setting, to help kids develop a greater sense of responsibility when it comes to protecting our natural resources.

Under the park shelter, where Matchette and her friends are busy peering at a resting Tad (he’s seen a lot of activity for the day) under a microscope, Don Huggins is explaining the infestation of zebra mussels in Kansas waters, among other things, to the young crowd.

He knows the fifth-graders might not fully grasp some of the more complex concepts introduced today, but also knows kids learn best when their experience isn’t limited to a textbook.

“I think that’s what we hope to do, is have that tactile, visual experience that they may carry with them as opposed to the rote memory of, How do you spell lobster?” explains Huggins, a senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey.

There aren’t any lobsters to be found in Tad’s container habitat, but there is, Huggins points out, plenty of duckweed. The floating plants produce the smallest known flower in the world, measuring roughly 0.04 inches across, which Huggins finds pretty cool.

The kids seem to agree, though tadpoles might be the biggest draw.

“What you really hope for is that they realize that an aquatic environment has many, many living components to it, just like a meadow or a forest or anything else,” Huggins says.