October 24, 2018, students attending Daphne High School went on a field trip to the Robertsdale Coliseum. On this field trip students taught fourth graders from around the county about the Mobile Bay Watershed.

A watershed is defined as the area of land that drains to one particular stream or water body. Every streams has its own watershed. Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They have city, county, state, and nation boundaries. The Mobile Bay watershed covers approximately sixty-five percent of the state of Alabama and portions of Mississippi, Georgia, and Tennessee. The Mobile Bay is serving as a drainage system for 43,662 square miles. Mobile Bay is the sixth largest in the nation by area and at 62,000 cubic feet per second.

“I learned things about the Watershed of Mobile Bay that I never knew.” says Taylor Smith.

As soon as the DHS students arrived at the Robertsdale Coliseum they were greeted by the volunteers and assigned stations. Each student had their own table set up. The students had to set up the table with markers, 3D model of the Mobile Bay, aluminum foil, kool aid, cocoa powder, and a poster with the highlighted areas of the river flows. Volunteers explained to each class what, how, when, and where Watersheds occur.

“It was cool working with the kids and experiencing it for myself,” Keirston Johnson said.

After the main volunteer was done with there speech, the fourth graders were split into two four sections. DHS students at their table illustrated an activity for the fourth graders and walked them through it. In this activity the students had to draw restaurants, any places they liked to go to and have fun, houses, and water streams on the 3D model. When that was completed, kool aid and cocoa powder was added onto the model to be represented as water streams, dirt roads, and trash.

Then, the elementary students sprayed water out of a spray bottle onto the platform and watched how it all came together at the bottom of the model. Which is a prime example of how the Mobile Bay works.