It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish {Games and Puzzles}

Frannie loves solving puzzles like crosswords and word searches.  Frannie also loves learning about groundwater.  Frannie can't think of a better way to combine these two things than with The Groundwater Foundation's games and puzzles, including word searches, crosswords, coloring sheets, mazes and apps!  Frannie wants to share these activities with you and your troop!

 Contamination Crossword - How many contamination vocabulary terms do you know?

Find all the groundwater words in this fun word search! Groundwater Word Search

Recycle Maze - Can you find your way out of this twisty maze?

Water Crossword - Review what you know about our most important resource - Water!

Show off your water cycle knowledge and complete the Water Cycle Crossword.

Wet Word Search - How many vocabulary words can you find?

Frannie the Fish Coloring Sheet - Reveal your inner artist!

Test your groundwater knowledge with the free Water1der app for Apple products!

Keep an eye out for a new tool from The Groundwater Foundation - a searchable filter for groundwater education activities - you'll be able to search by age group, topic, time, and category for even more fun activities and resources.  The filter will be online soon!

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish {World Water Day}

Yesterday, March 22, Frannie celebrated World Water Day! World Water Day is held annually to celebrate freshwater, its importance to all of us, and the need for sustainable use.  This year's World Water Day focused on water's role in the workplace and how water and jobs can improve the quality of life for people around the world.  Did you know that 1.5 billion people (that's nearly 1 out of every 4 people) work in water-related sectors!

Watch World Water Day's official trailer: 

Hear from Guy Ryder, the International Labor Organization Director-General and Chair of UN-Water, on this year's World Water Day theme:

Frannie talked with her family and friends about why it is important to protect freshwater - because we all rely on it!  Freshwater is the water we use to grow our food, to drink, to play in, to bathe, and the list goes on and on.  Most of the world's usable freshwater is stored under our feet as groundwater:

 

Courtesy of the United States Geological Survey.

Check out The Groundwater Foundation and Frannie's previous posts for fun ideas of ways you can protect and conserve groundwater!

World Water Day emphasizes the importance of water to us all.  Water is one shared resource.  We must all do our part to ensure the world's freshwater is taken care, used wisely, and is available to all of us!  Share how you will help protect water resources and be sure to tell your family and friends about protecting and conserving water every day!

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish {Look, Listen, Discover}

Water is part of everything around us!  Water is vital to everyone, especially to fish friends like Frannie that live in it.  Frannie is going to share a fun activity that combines creativity with the power of observation to discover and explore water's irreplaceable role in our world - all you have to do is look around and listen to your surroundings to see proof of it.

Here's what you'll need:

• Writing utensil
• Paper
• A surface to write on (for example, a clipboard)

Here's what you do: 
1.  Read through The Groundwater Foundation's Safety First Rules.  Remember - always be careful when outdoors and when you are around bodies of water.

2.  Find a local water body that is safe to visit.  Hike around the water body and the surrounding area.

3.   Use the following questions as a jumping off point for observations on your hike:

• When it rains, where does the water go?
• What does the body of water look like?  Deep, shallow, calm, choppy, big, small?
• How does the water look?  Clear, cloudy, dirty?
• What do the banks look like?  Rocky, rich with vegetation, bare, slippery?
• How might the weather impact your location?  (Drought, storms, snow, rain, etc.)
• What potential contamination sources can you identify?  Can you see trash and debris?  Can you see something that might pose a threat to water quality?
• Do you see aquatic life?  Are there insects in the water, in the vegetation, or under rocks?
• What types of wildlife can you see or hear?
• How are people using the water? 

 4.  Write a story, poem, song or draw a picture of what you observed.  Get creative!  There are so many ways we use water and just as many ways we can protect and conserve it!

Share your stories, poems, and drawings with The Groundwater Foundation and you could be featured on Frannie's blog!

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The Groundwater Foundation and Frannie the Fish want to wish Girl Scouts a happy 104th anniversary of inspiring, empowering and educating girls across the United States!

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish {National Groundwater Awareness Week}

March 6-12 is National Groundwater Awareness Week!  

Frannie is so excited to celebrate our most precious resource, groundwater.  Groundwater is water contained under the ground's surface, located in the spaces between soil particles and in the cracks of sand, gravel, and rock.  

Groundwater is the source of water for:

• Drinking - About 51% of Americans rely on groundwater for their drinking water supplies.

• Irrigation - Groundwater helps grow our food.  64% of groundwater is used to irrigate crops.

• Recreation - Discharge from groundwater provides water in lakes, rivers, and wetlands that we swim, boat, fish, and play in.  Discharge is an outflow of groundwater from an aquifer.

• Industry - Groundwater is important in many industrial processes, for example ethanol production and food processing. 

Check out The Groundwater Foundation's Girl Scouts pages to find fun, hands-on activities and great resources to learn more about groundwater and earn two groundwater patches in the process! Here are a few simple things you can do to help protect and conserve groundwater:

• Water wisely
• Go native
• Use natural alternatives
• Reduce, reuse, and recycle
• Wash smarter
• Fix any drips 
• Manage waste properly

Be sure to share what you have learned with your family, your class at school, your friends, and The Groundwater Foundation! 

Find out more about the National Ground Water Association's National Groundwater Awareness Week!

It's Water-Wise Wednesday with Frannie the Fish {Fish Feeding Frenzy}

This week Frannie wants to share a fun activity to do with your troop to discover how pollution can affect the environment, water and food sources, including how it can move through the food chain and become more concentrated.  Fish Feeding Frenzy is a great way to learn about biomagnification.  Often pollutants that exist in small amounts in the environment can become concentrated in creatures near the top of the food chain.  For example, in a stream tiny creatures that can't be seen or microorganisms called plankton, may absorb small amounts of pollutants; fish that eat lots of plankton might retain these pollutants in their tissues; birds or people that eat fish might concentrate pollutants still more.  This process is called biomagnification and can produce health problems for many creatures in an ecosystem, including humans.

Here's what you'll need:

• Pom-poms of assorted colors
• Identification chart showing what each pom-pom color represents (see the example below)
• A plastic cup for each Girl Scout labeled as either a "minnow," "little fish," or "big fish."

Here's what you do:
 1.  Start by creating an identification chart to show which pollutant the different color pom-poms represent.  Don't show this chart to the Girl Scouts until after the game is played.  Below is an example list of pollutants used regularly in businesses and homes:

• Yellow - fertilizers
• Red - paints
• Purple - solvents
• Brown - chemical cleaners
• White - oil and grease
• Orange - metals
• Black - motor oils
• Green - pesticides
• Light Blue - safe (contaminant-free) food

2.  Assign each Girl Scout the role of a minnow, a little fish, or a big fish.  Give each Girl Scout the appropriate cup after they are assigned their role.

3.  Scatter the pom-poms all over the ground. 

4.  The Girl Scouts will have two minutes to collect as many pom-poms in their cup as possible with one hand behind their back.

5.  Using the identification card, have the Girl Scouts identify which pollutants they "ate."  How did these pollutants get into the water?  The Story of Frannie the Fish is a great way to learn how pollutants can end up in surface water.

6.  Explain the basic food chain of the game: the minnows end up in a stream where they become a food source for the little fish.  Tell the Girl Scout "minnows" to pour their pom-poms into the cups of the little fish.  This increases the quantity of pollutants that the little fish have accumulated.

7.  The little fish swim to a river where they become a food source for larger fish.  Tell the Girl Scout "little fish" to pour their pom-poms into the cups of the big fish.  The big fish now have a large amount of pom-poms representing different pollutants.

8.  As the big fish swims through the river, they are caught by a fisherman and become the "catch of the day."  These fish become a food source for humans.  Humans, at the top of the food chain, will consume a large quantity of the different pollutants. 

9.  Make a list of ways to keep our surface and groundwater clean from pollutants.

Share pictures of your troop playing the fish feeding frenzy game or your list of ways to keep it clean here!