So you want to be a junior watershed explorer? Let’s get started. My friends Theo and Sully here will help show you how to use your explorer booklet and become an official junior watershed explorer. This booklet was designed to help you appreciate and protect the lakes, streams, and groundwater resources around you. Inside you’ll find different activities like drawings, a board game, connect the dots, a scavenger hunt, and more. All these activities will help you learn about nature and explore your watershed.

What’s a watershed and how do we explore it? A watershed is just an area of land where all the water drains to the same place. In our case, that’s Nine Mile Creek, and we explore it by getting outside. But no matter where you are or whether there’s water or not, you are always in a watershed.

Let’s do a sample page together. Open up to page 11, the scavenger hunt. On this page, you’ll find boxes with different things listed inside like a fish, plant growing in water, seed, animal tracks. See how many of these nine you can find and draw pictures of them. On our hike we found animal tracks. Can you guess what they are?

Maybe you’ll find something unexpected. It’s the rare Nine Mile Creek mega beaver! We found it! No matter where you explore, you’re sure to find interesting things, but please remember to be respectful of any creatures or plants you find. Don’t forget to draw a picture of what you find so that you can remember it later.

And there are plenty of other drawing activities in this booklet for those who are artistically minded like Grace here. As you go through other pages, you’ll learn how you can protect our water and keep the creatures that live there healthy. And that’s all there is to it. Just complete the same number of pages as you are old, and you’ll be an official junior watershed explorer, and you’ll get some cool prizes too.