Ward 2 Development Forum

Mikiya: The Sponge

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aliasesmikiya

9 min read

This is your own page for the Water for the Valley project. Your tasks for every week to the end of the project are on this page.

You may use an AI helper. Copy and paste this link into the chat: https://df.valleyofgrace.co.za/cultural/education/project/llms.txt. It can check a fact or explain a hard word. Your Field Book, your map layer and your plan card are yours to make.

To see what the whole class is making, see Water for the Valley: Your Term 4 Project.

What changed on 26 October

We won’t be writing letters or holding a panel. If you started a letter, keep it in your Field Book. The class now makes two things together: a Valley Map, as one combined poster we work on in class, and a short Valley Water Plan. You keep your theme. You add one layer to the map and write one part of the plan.

Your question

Where and how could our valley’s land hold more water?

You are the class expert on soil, trees and streams. On the class poster you paint healthy land green and damaged land brown, and you put a ring on each place where we could hold more water or plant more trees. In the plan you write Part 2: Holding more water.

Facts to stamp

Choose three of these for your Field Book. Tie the correct colour thread to each one.

  • [IC] - Blue

  • [MS] - Yellow

  • [TBV] - Red

  • Healthy soil soaks up rain like a sponge and lets it out slowly into springs and streams. Damaged soil sheds the rain in a few hours. (Water Retention Landscapes)

  • Pines and wattles came from other countries. They drink more water than the native plants they push out.

  • On one Cape mountain, streams ran 55% lower 23 years after pines moved in.

  • Clearing invasive trees puts water back into streams.

  • Nobody has measured how much extra water clearing would add in our valley.

Words to use:

  • catchment (land where rain drains into one river),
  • invasive (a plant from somewhere else that spreads and crowds out the plants that belong),
  • native (a plant that belongs where it grows),
  • runoff (rain that flows over the ground and does not soak in).

Think of Europe

A mountain is a wall for travellers and a sponge for water. Where do Europe’s great rivers begin? What do the mountains do with rain and snow before they send it down? Bring your answer from main lesson.

Your leaky dam

Everyone in the class does this in Week 3.

A gully is a deep channel that rushing rainwater has cut into a slope. A leaky dam is a low wall of stones, logs or packed branches built across a gully. When rain rushes down, the wall slows the water so it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Some water still leaks through, so the stream below keeps running. Gully stuffing means packing branches and brush into a gully so it catches soil and water. Branches cleared from pines and wattles can be used. Other small helpers are lines of stones laid across a slope, and plants along the banks to hold the soil.

You can also choose a flatter stretch of a river that a flood has damaged before. Floods tear up the banks and leave rocks scattered along the riverbed. Those rocks can be used to build the leaky dam wall, so the river slows down and spreads out there.

Find your site on Google Earth (25 minutes). With a grown-up, open the class map: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing

  1. Look at the slopes and rivers around Genadendal and Greyton. Zoom in until you can see single trees.
  2. Find a gully, or a flood-damaged stretch of river. Gully clues: a dark or bare line running down a slope, a strip of green along it, or a fan of bare soil at the bottom where the water dropped what it carried. River clues: a flatter part of the river where the banks look torn or bare, and pale patches of rock and gravel spread along the riverbed.
  3. Choose the spot where you would build your leaky dam.
  4. Take a screenshot with your spot circled, or draw what you see. Hold your pointer on the spot and write down the numbers Google Earth shows at the bottom of the screen. Michael will use them to pin your site on the class map.

Plan around it (20 minutes). On one page, write or draw:

  • why you chose this spot,
  • what you would build around it, such as a path for visitors, a bench or lookout, a sign that explains how it works, a measuring post, or a nursery bed or vegetable garden below where the soil stays damp,
  • what activities you would offer, such as guided walks, building days where visitors help stuff a gully, school field trips, birdwatching, or workshops that teach people to build leaky dams,
  • your own theme question: What does the land around your gully look like: bare, grassy, or full of trees? Where would you plant to hold the soil?
  • one more way the valley could earn money, chosen from the list below.

Other ways the valley could earn. Each of these is an idea nobody has tested here, so give it a red thread.

  • Growing vegetables for restaurants and guesthouses in Greyton
  • A nursery selling young local plants for gardens and restoration work
  • Selling firewood, poles and wood chips from cleared pines and wattles
  • Making compost from cleared brush and garden waste
  • Honey from bees kept near the fynbos
  • Guided walks and hikes along restored streams
  • Teaching days for schools and visitors
  • A farm stall or Saturday market for valley produce
  • Collecting seed from local plants for restoration projects
  • Furniture and crafts made from cleared wood
  • Paid work measuring rain and streams

Look on Google Earth only. Don’t build anything there just yet. Rivers are dangerous after rain, so never go to one without a grown-up. Many slopes belong to someone, so don’t write who owns the land.

This week: before the next session

About an hour and a half. This replaces the letter.

Do

  1. Sketch your layer (40 minutes). On a sheet of paper, draw the valley’s mountains and slopes roughly, with the river at the bottom. Shade green where you think the land is healthy. Shade brown where you think it is bare, or full of pines and wattles. These are guesses, so use dotted edges.
  2. Ask a grown-up (10 minutes). Show your sketch to a grown-up who knows the valley. Ask them for one place they would change. Write it on the sketch with a yellow thread.
  3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw something from the Four Corners game or the Bean Bond. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 3: Lay Out the Valley

A little over two hours. The leaky dam takes the extra time.

Do

  1. Your leaky dam (45 minutes). Follow the steps in “Your leaky dam” above.

  2. Fix the bare tray (45 minutes). In class you showed how bare soil sheds water. Now make bare soil hold more. Fill a tray with packed soil and tilt it into a slope. Try one fix at a time:

    • press small ridges across the slope with your finger,
    • lay rows of leaf litter or grass cuttings across it,
    • put a line of small stones across it.

    After each fix, pour the same jug of water slowly at the top. Catch what runs off the bottom in a cup and mark how full it is.

  3. Choose your best fix (10 minutes). Line up the cups. Which fix let the least water run away? Write the order down.

Tell

  1. Tell it back (10 minutes). Show a grown-up your best fix and explain why it held more water. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

  1. Your plan card in pencil (20 minutes). Fill in your plan card for your part. Start from your leaky dam: what you would build and the activities go under “What we would do” and “What it gives the valley”. For “Who could do it”, look at Wild Restoration and the Zonderend Water Users Association on the Register. For “What must be true first”, remember that nobody has measured how much extra water clearing would add in our valley.

Your plan card has five lines, with a drawing at the top:

  1. What we would do (one sentence)

  2. Where (point to it on the map)

  3. Who could do it (organisations get a red thread)

  4. What it gives the valley (water, work, money, learning or care for the land)

  5. What must be true first (your open questions, each with a red thread)

  6. Field Book page 3 (10 minutes). Stick in your leaky dam screenshot or drawing. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 4: Hold the Water

About two hours.

Do

  1. Your final plan card (50 minutes). Copy your plan card out in your best writing. Change anything the class or Sam’s promise round showed you. Paint or draw the picture at the top.

Tell

  1. Tell it back (15 minutes). Read your card to a grown-up. Ask them which line is least clear, and fix it.

Think

  1. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Paint the fix that held the most water, on a real valley slope. Add three facts, each with a thread.
  2. Think of Europe (15 minutes). Read your Europe answer again. Add one sentence about what it tells you about your part of the plan.

Week 5: Make the Plan

About two hours.

Do

  1. Practise your part (60 minutes). You have about two minutes at the showing. Show your tray and pour water on it while you tell. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

  1. Tell it to your family (20 minutes). Show them your part as you will on the day. Ask them one thing they didn’t understand.

Think

  1. Field Book page 5 (40 minutes). Draw the whole Valley Map from memory, as best you can, and mark your own layer. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 6: The showing

Your last Field Book page (30 minutes), after the showing. Draw the thing from this project you will remember longest. Under it, write the open questions from your part that nobody has answered yet. These are what we still don’t know.

Remember

  • You don’t need to contact any organisation. Talk with your family and the adults at school.
  • Write “could”, never “will”, about an organisation. Nobody has agreed to anything.
  • This idea has not been discussed by the Forum yet. Keep what you find with your class and family.

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