A great deal of good water education already exists across federal agencies, nonprofits, utilities, and universities. Each listing below describes what a resource offers, which grades it fits, and whether it is free, and shows the date its link was last checked. Where access requires a workshop or a purchase, the listing says so. These descriptions are our honest summaries, and the linked organizations' sites remain the authoritative source for what they currently offer.
Project WET Foundation Editor's pick
DiscoverWater.org is Project WET's free student-facing site, offering nine interactive modules that walk elementary students through the water cycle, watersheds, oceans, and everyday water use. It runs in a browser with no account and requires no teacher preparation.
Link verified Oct 2026
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Editor's pick
This EPA hub gathers federal water lesson plans and teacher guides into a single grade-banded list, spanning Darby Duck aquatic experiments for early elementary through Watershed Academy modules for high school. It functions as an index rather than an original curriculum, pointing teachers to activities scattered across EPA program offices that they would otherwise have to hunt down individually.
Link verified Oct 2026
Stroud Water Research Center Editor's pick
Model My Watershed lets students run the same professional-grade stormwater and land-use models that working hydrologists use, applied to real data for any address in the lower 48 states. Students can compare how a proposed development or a conservation project would change runoff and water quality in their own neighborhood.
Link verified Oct 2026
Project WET Foundation Editor's pick
Project WET is a long-running water-education publisher, best known for its Curriculum and Activity Guide 2.0 and a network of state coordinators who run teacher workshops. The activities are hands-on simulations and games refined over decades of classroom use, and the state network means training often comes with professional development credit.
Being re-verified
TeachEngineering (University of Colorado Boulder, with partner universities) Editor's pick
TeachEngineering's water hub organizes dozens of free, NGSS-aligned engineering lessons and multi-week units by grade band, from water-filtration projects in grades 3-5 through wastewater-treatment models and hydro-turbine design in grades 9-12. Every entry follows the same complete format, with a materials list, timed procedure, and assessment, which makes it easy to drop straight into a class period.
Link verified Oct 2026
U.S. Geological Survey Editor's pick
The Water Science School is USGS's public-facing encyclopedia of water science, covering the water cycle, water properties, groundwater, surface water, and water use in plain-language articles backed by real agency data and maps. A companion teacher-resources page adds lesson plans, regional guides, posters, and a class play, making it as useful for lesson planning as it is for student research.
Link verified Oct 2026
American Water Works Association & Water Environment Federation Editor's pick
Work for Water is a career-exploration site built jointly by the American Water Works Association and the Water Environment Federation, aimed at showing students and job seekers how to enter the industry, including through roles that begin with on-the-job training and certification. A three-minute quiz matches a student's interests to one of ten water-sector roles, and a region-specific "Get Started" guide links out to real certification and training programs.
Link verified Oct 2026
Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies (Project WILD)
Aquatic WILD is Project WILD's companion curriculum focused specifically on aquatic wildlife and ecology, built on the same activity format as the original Project WILD guide but paired with aquatic-specific field investigations and STEM connections. The full K-12 Curriculum & Activity Guide is not sold directly; it is distributed to educators who complete a state-run Aquatic WILD training.
Link verified Oct 2026
University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center
Arizona Project WET, hosted by the University of Arizona's Water Resources Research Center, is the state's official Project WET USA program and, as a state program of Arizona Cooperative Extension, works in multiple Arizona counties. Offerings include the fourth-grade Arizona Water Festival, The Nature of Groundwater classroom program, and teacher academies that build content knowledge in Arizona-specific water topics such as groundwater-surface water connections.
Link verified Oct 2026
City of Austin Watershed Protection Department
Austin's Watershed Protection Department runs a graded sequence of free water programs: Clean Creek Campus for grades 3-8, a multi-day Earth Camp for fifth graders at Title I schools, an on-campus Earth School presentation, and Watershed Detectives for middle and high school. A groundwater curriculum and runoff-model kits are also available for classroom use.
Link verified Oct 2026
American Water Works Association
Drinking Water Week is AWWA's annual national awareness week each May, and this page is the association's outreach toolkit for the utilities and water professionals who run it: logos, proclamation templates, and social-media content rather than student materials. It is useful to a teacher mainly as a hook and a calendar date, and it suggests community activities, such as children's poster or essay contests, that a local utility might hold and a class could enter.
Link verified Oct 2026
BAYWORK
BAYWORK is a partnership of San Francisco Bay Area water and wastewater utilities that runs an educator clearinghouse of K-12 curriculum, teacher's guides, and editable student worksheets. It backs that curriculum with career-pathway materials covering seven mission-critical water-sector job categories, field trips, and guest speakers drawn from member utility agencies.
Being re-verified
Oklahoma Conservation Commission
Blue Thumb, the education arm of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission's Water Quality Division, trains teachers to bring authentic stream-monitoring data collection into their classrooms through Blue Thumb in the Classroom, a two-day training in Norman with a modest registration fee ($20 for the June 2026 session), and separately offers free presentations to schools through its Request a Program option. The program also coordinates Project WET and Project WILD workshops for educators around the state.
Link verified Oct 2026
California Department of Water Resources
California DWR ships free printed classroom materials statewide, ranging from a Pre-K-through-grade-2 activity book to grade 9-12 posters and fact sheets, alongside a 26-lesson hands-on curriculum guide and streaming or DVD videos on the water cycle and conservation. Digital versions of most items are also downloadable directly from the page.
Being re-verified
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
The Cary Institute's Eco-Inquiry program turns scientists' research on the Hudson River into classroom-ready modules on water quality, eutrophication, PCB pollution mapping, invasive species, and watershed comparisons. It also runs the Hudson Data Jam, a student competition that pairs authentic regional datasets with a data-storytelling format, backed by teacher professional development.
Link verified Oct 2026
DC Water
DC Water's teacher hub bundles K-12 lesson guides on watersheds and conservation with hands-on outreach such as the Enviroscape watershed model and a math-based "Game of Pipes" maze. High schoolers can go further through Engineering Tomorrow workshops held at the Blue Plains treatment plant, which put students inside a working facility.
Link verified Oct 2026
Denver Water
Denver Water's classroom outreach program combines free presentations, delivered in person or remotely, with self-paced online modules, videos, and articles, plus high school walking tours of two Denver-area treatment plants. Educators can also access Denver Water's own professional development, offered both online and in person.
Link verified Oct 2026
EarthEcho International
The EarthEcho Water Challenge is a global citizen-science program that has students test local water for turbidity, temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen with low-cost kits, then upload their results to a shared worldwide database. Running from March 22 to December each year, it turns a water-quality unit into a contribution to a real international dataset rather than a one-off classroom experiment.
Link verified Oct 2026
East Bay Municipal Utility District
EBMUD runs free fifth-grade field trips to East Bay watersheds and water treatment facilities, plus free high school tours of a wastewater treatment plant, backed by student and teacher workbooks available in English and Spanish for every grade. At least half of EBMUD's field trips are reserved for Title 1 schools, with transportation funding available to remove cost as a barrier.
Link verified Oct 2026
Environmental Finance Center Network
The Environmental Finance Center Network's Future Water Leaders hub is a filterable one-stop collection of water-education curriculum, videos, and learning kits paired with career-exploration content on drinking water, wastewater, and reclamation jobs. Content is organized around eight learning objectives spanning K-12 through post-secondary audiences.
Being re-verified
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
WaterSense Kids is EPA's conservation-themed page for younger students, built around the mascot Flo and a browser game that has players guide her through pipes while dodging water-wasting monsters. It pairs that game with printable coloring pages and activity sheets, and its teacher's guides and family pledges carry a water-conservation lesson into students' homes.
Link verified Oct 2026
Philadelphia Water Department — Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center
Fairmount Water Works, part of the Philadelphia Water Department, runs four graded programs from a K-3 introduction to the Schuylkill River through a 6-12 program in which students help Water Department scientists monitor freshwater mussel growth. Programs are free for School District of Philadelphia students, with a suggested per-student donation from other schools.
Link verified Oct 2026
Freshwater Society
This Minnesota nonprofit provides free downloadable presentation templates on the water cycle, drinking water, and wastewater treatment tailored to three grade bands, plus a career-presentation template that lets water-industry professionals visit classrooms. Partner links connect teachers to Upper Midwest citizen-science programs and treatment plant tour videos.
Link verified Oct 2026
Georgia Environmental Protection Division
Georgia Adopt-A-Stream, run by the state's Environmental Protection Division, has trained citizen scientists and educators in stream water-quality monitoring since 1993 through a five-hour Educator's Guide workshop that introduces classroom-ready chemical, physical, and biological monitoring activities. The program also rents Enviroscape watershed models to classrooms and coordinates with Georgia Project WET, Project WILD, and Project Learning Tree for additional water-education workshops.
Link verified Oct 2026
The GLOBE Program (NASA-sponsored)
GLOBE's hydrosphere protocols are scientist-developed field procedures for measuring alkalinity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, macroinvertebrates, nitrates, pH, salinity, temperature, and transparency in a local stream, river, lake, or coastal water body. Student measurements are entered into an international research database, which gives a class a real role in a worldwide science effort.
Link verified Oct 2026
H2O for Life
H2O for Life pairs US schools with partner schools abroad that lack water and sanitation access, and backs that partnership with free lesson plans organized by elementary, middle, and secondary grade bands. Its Water Guardians curriculum adds five web-based lessons on the Mississippi River and global water issues, usable in distance-learning or in-person classes.
Link verified Oct 2026
US Water Alliance
Imagine a Day Without Water is a national advocacy day each October built around the simple premise of asking students to think through what would actually stop working without running water. The US Water Alliance's student page collects virtual tours, learning tools, and activities that frame water as infrastructure and public investment rather than purely as science.
Link verified Oct 2026
Iowa Department of Natural Resources
Iowa DNR's classroom and teacher page is a short directory of field-trip sites and education programs. It points teachers to tours of the state's fish hatcheries and visitor centers, to state parks and recreation areas, and to linked programs that include Project WILD and Aquatic WILD and the DNR's conservation education site.
Link verified Oct 2026
Izaak Walton League of America
Save Our Streams is a national volunteer stream-monitoring program that trains everyday citizens and school groups to identify aquatic macroinvertebrates and assess stream habitat. It pairs that field protocol with Creek Freaks, a youth watershed curriculum aimed at upper-elementary and middle school classes, and a national list of volunteer trainers who provide the field training for certification.
Link verified Oct 2026
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
LADWP pairs classroom lessons and detailed lesson plans for grades 4-12 with a regional Science Bowl competition, an Adopt-A-School volunteer program, and facility tours run in partnership with Discovery Cube Los Angeles. Because LADWP supplies both water and electricity, its materials teach the two utilities together rather than treating water in isolation.
Link verified Oct 2026
Louisville Water Company
Louisville Water runs paid, curriculum-based field trips to the WaterWorks Museum in its original 1860s Pumping Station No. 1, with a guided walking tour that includes a restored 100-foot steam pump in a working pump station and an interactive lesson tied to Kentucky content standards in science, social studies, practical living, literacy, and math.
Link verified Oct 2026
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Metropolitan Water District, the wholesale supplier for a six-county Southern California region, runs a custom "H2O Show" classroom presentation for pre-K through college alongside free field trips, teacher in-services, and a middle-and-high-school STEAM design program called Water Engineering 4 Good. A student art calendar contest drawing entries from across the six-county service area and Scout merit-badge workshops round out the offering.
Link verified Oct 2026
Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE)
Michigan EGLE Classroom is the state environmental agency's education hub, offering a Resource Lending Station that lends EnviroScape models, a Sand and Gravel Simulator, and H2O Q water-quality backpacks for pickup at EGLE district offices and two partner sites, alongside the MEECS curriculum, seven Michigan-specific units for grades 3 through 12 that teach the state's economy and environment through data-based science and social-studies lessons. Its Freshwater Literacy and Stewardship Initiative, launched in 2019, adds a toolkit built specifically around the Great Lakes and Michigan watersheds.
Link verified Oct 2026
Missouri Department of Natural Resources
Missouri DNR's St. Louis Regional Office offers free 40- to 60-minute presentations tailored by grade, from a whole-body Water Cycle Reenactment for grades 2 through 4 to a Safe Drinking Water presentation with a Water Treatment Challenge for grades 9 through 12, each pairing a hands-on activity with core water-science content. The program serves eight eastern Missouri counties; in-person presentations are currently unavailable, and virtual sessions are offered on a limited basis.
Link verified Oct 2026
Massachusetts Water Resources Authority
MWRA offers free K-12 classroom presentations and hands-on activities, including a model water-distribution system built from straws and cardboard tubes, plus downloadable curriculum guides for grades 3-4 and middle school and tours of the Deer Island wastewater treatment plant. An annual poster, writing, and video contest asks students what should and should not go down a drain.
Link verified Oct 2026
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
This is the education hub for NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission, organizing lesson plans, videos, and interactive tools around K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 bands. It uses real satellite precipitation data to teach the water cycle, giving space-curious students a way into a topic usually taught with a diagram alone.
Link verified Oct 2026
National Geographic Society
This seven-chapter educator guide covers freshwater biodiversity, the water cycle, water quality, and water rights with National Geographic's signature maps and case studies, each chapter downloadable as its own PDF. It sits alongside standalone activities such as a porosity-and-permeability groundwater simulation and a Chesapeake FieldScope GIS investigation using real water-quality data.
Link verified Oct 2026
The Nature Conservancy
Nature Lab offers free lesson plans, teacher guides, and virtual field trips organized by age band from elementary through high school, including "Gray, Green, Blue: Water Security and YOU!," a four-part high school series on water security and green infrastructure. Its virtual field trips visit real sites such as the Seattle water supply and Arizona rivers.
Link verified Oct 2026
North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Water Resources
The North Carolina Division of Water Resources' Office of Water Education coordinates Project WET workshops across the state, giving attendees the Project WET 2.0 guide and activities aligned to North Carolina's science, ELA, social-studies, and math curriculums, and offers It's Our Water, a free ten-hour self-guided teacher-training module on the hydrosphere available by emailing the office directly. NC Stream Watch, a community-science mapping project, and monthly Water Education Coffee Talks round out the office's offerings.
Link verified Oct 2026
New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
The AmeriCorps New Jersey Watershed Ambassadors Program, run through the state Department of Environmental Protection, has placed a trained Ambassador in each of New Jersey's 20 watershed management areas for more than two decades, and each Ambassador delivers free classroom presentations on topics such as the water cycle, macroinvertebrates, and the Enviroscape pollution model. Beyond the classroom, Ambassadors also lead rain barrel workshops and tree plantings tied to the same watershed curriculum.
Link verified Oct 2026
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOAA's water resource collection pulls together lessons, data, videos, and career content on the water cycle, watersheds, oceans, the Great Lakes, and freshwater systems from across the agency's many programs. It offers a natural bridge from a water unit into weather, climate, and ocean science, backed by NOAA's own satellite and observational data.
Link verified Oct 2026
New York City Department of Environmental Protection
NYC DEP's K-8 curriculum guide tells the city's full water story, from drinking water through wastewater, stormwater, and harbor water, and pairs it with Trout in the Classroom coordination across the Catskill, Delaware, and Croton watersheds. The department also offers educator grants and field programs tied to New York City's reservoir system.
Link verified Oct 2026
Ohio Environmental Protection Agency
The Ohio Environmental Education Fund, created by the state legislature in 1990 and administered by Ohio EPA, distributes roughly $700,000 a year in mini grants of $500 to $5,000 and general grants of $5,000 to $25,000 to schools and organizations running environmental-education projects, including stream monitoring, aquaponics, and riparian-buffer restoration work tied to water quality. Ohio EPA also coordinates statewide access to the Project WET and Healthy Water, Healthy People curricula for elementary, middle, and high schools.
Link verified Oct 2026
PBS
PBS LearningMedia's water collections gather broadcast-quality video segments, interactives, and lesson support materials on the water cycle, water treatment engineering, and nonpoint-source pollution, including teaching materials tied to the documentary "H2O: The Molecule That Made Us." All resources are filterable by grade band and resource type, and can be assigned directly through Google Classroom.
Link verified Oct 2026
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
Pennsylvania DEP's Environmental Education Grants Program, funded by a share of the state's pollution fines since the Environmental Education Act of 1993, has distributed more than $16 million to schools, districts, and nonprofits for environmental projects, with Seed Grants up to $5,000, Grow Grants from $5,001 to $30,000, and Impact Grants from $30,001 to $65,000. Recent water-related awards have funded stream-monitoring investigations, aquaponics systems, and riparian-buffer planting projects addressing stormwater and water quality.
Link verified Oct 2026
Portland Water Bureau
The Portland Water Bureau offers full-day Bull Run Watershed field trips for grades 3-12, where students test water quality and tour a 1929 dam, plus classroom visits on water quality, pressure, conservation, and fish. A self-paced Water Home School option supports distance learning about Portland's two drinking water sources.
Link verified Oct 2026
Sustainable Forestry Initiative / Project Learning Tree
Water Wonders is Project Learning Tree's station-based water-cycle simulation, in which students physically move between cards representing a cloud, glacier, stream, groundwater, ocean, plant, and animal to trace how one water molecule moves through the cycle. It is a kinesthetic activity that works outdoors or in a gym, drawn from PLT's larger PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide.
Link verified Oct 2026
San Diego County Water Authority
The Water Authority offers free elementary assemblies and a digital water-education workbook, and supports the Splash Science mobile lab, run by the San Diego County Office of Education, in which grades 4-8 investigate how water pollution affects wildlife through hands-on experiments delivered in person or virtually. Cash awards of $100 to $300 support water-related entries at the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair.
Link verified Oct 2026
San Antonio Water System
San Antonio Water System offers free, age-customized presentations for pre-K through grade 5, from Wiggle Waggle's Pond for the youngest students to The Tale of Fiesta Lane for grades 4 and 5, alongside field trips, field-trip transportation mini-grants, and the Impact Program, a service-learning initiative that pairs water education with a real community project.
Link verified Oct 2026
Seattle Public Utilities
Seattle Public Utilities offers free naturalist-led watershed field trips for 4th and 5th grade classes at its Cedar River Watershed Education Center, and it coordinates Salmon in the Schools, in which classes raise salmon eggs each winter and release the fish at a local creek in spring. A partnership with Nature Vision adds standards-aligned water conservation lessons for other grades.
Link verified Oct 2026
Southwest Florida Water Management District
SWFWMD's education office funds Splash! School Grants for freshwater-education projects and backs them with free publications, hands-on activities, and water-education videos. Teachers can also join Project WET professional-development workshops, book virtual watershed excursions, or visit approved field-study sites on district lands.
Link verified Oct 2026
Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, Texas State University
Texas Stream Team, based at Texas State University's Meadows Center, offers TEKS-correlated downloadable water curriculum and Enviroscape watershed demonstrations alongside a statewide water-quality-monitoring certification program open to students at every grade level. Texas Aquatic Science materials extend the program into experiential aquatic science for grades 6 through 12.
Link verified Oct 2026
The Groundwater Foundation
The Groundwater Foundation publishes four structured lesson sets covering groundwater basics, the water cycle, aquifers, and pollution, each pairing a short video or reading with worksheets, coloring sheets, and a hands-on build like an edible aquifer or an aquifer-in-a-cup model. The site treats groundwater, rather than surface water, as its main subject.
Being re-verified
The Groundwater Project
This international hydrogeology nonprofit publishes free, peer-reviewed groundwater books and videos for young learners, including a multilingual picture book and an "Ask Professor Água" video series. It sits alongside the organization's much larger open-access technical library, which also serves as accurate teacher background reading on groundwater.
Link verified Oct 2026
The Water Project
This free teacher's guide on the global water crisis can be taught whole or broken into standalone lessons across core subjects, with station-based activities, worksheets, and research prompts spanning elementary through high school. It ties naturally into the nonprofit's own well-building projects, giving classes an authentic service-learning outlet if they choose to take it.
Being re-verified
Trout Unlimited
Trout in the Classroom is a year-long program in which a class raises trout or salmon from eggs supplied by a state hatchery, monitoring water chemistry and tank conditions until the fish are large enough to release into an approved local waterway. Now in its fourth decade and reaching more than 100,000 students a year, it gives a class a months-long, hands-on basis for collecting water-quality data.
Link verified Oct 2026
Tucson Water
Tucson Water funds Arizona Project WET and the Environmental Education Exchange to deliver groundwater flow model presentations for middle and high school students and water-education field days for 4th graders in every school district in its service area. Since 2006, with Tucson Water's support, Arizona Project WET has reached more than 350,000 students and 6,000 teachers in the service area with STEM-based water education.
Link verified Oct 2026
Water Environment Federation
The Stockholm Junior Water Prize is an international water-research competition for high school students, run in the US by WEF since 1997 as a feeder into the international final held each August at World Water Week in Stockholm. Students aged 15 and up submit an original water-related research project, competing through regional and state rounds before a national winner is chosen.
Link verified Oct 2026
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation
Virginia's Office of Environmental Education, part of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, administers the annual Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience grant program, which funds up to $45,000 per proposal for hands-on watershed education; in 2025 it awarded $250,000 across 9 recipients, reaching more than 8,200 K-12 students. The office also runs EnviroLearn, a residential professional-development program for K-12 educators, and maintains an interactive map of environmental-education programs across the state.
Link verified Oct 2026
Washington State Department of Ecology
The Washington Department of Ecology's Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve offers on-site and virtual field programs for students from pre-K through college, backed by an Estuary Guide curriculum in three teacher-guide levels, Level 1 for grades K through 3, Level 2 for grades 4 through 8, and Level 3 for grades 9 through 12, built to complement a Padilla Bay visit but adaptable to other Pacific Northwest sites. The Reserve also periodically offers paid stipends for teachers who complete climate-science professional development and bring it back to their classrooms.
Link verified Oct 2026
Water Education Foundation
Founded in 1977 and California's Project WET coordinator since 1996, the Water Education Foundation runs teacher institutes and California-standards-aligned water curriculum for elementary and secondary classrooms. It also runs the Water Leaders program for emerging community leaders and a Colorado River Project offering educational tours, basin maps, and guides.
Link verified Oct 2026
EcoRise
The Water Footprint Calculator lets a student measure both their direct tap-water use and the "virtual water" embedded in the food, energy, and goods they consume, turning water conservation into a personal, quantitative exercise. A companion educator directory lists dozens of other water-education sites, curricula, and games, and a Water Footprints 101 article library backs the calculator with explanatory content.
Link verified Oct 2026
WaterAid
WaterAid's teaching resources bring the global water, sanitation, and hygiene crisis into the classroom through lesson plans, presentation slides, short films, and worksheets built around the charity's own country programs. The "Water Around the World" unit and case studies grounded in places such as Nepal give students a concrete, real-world entry point into water access and equity.
Being re-verified
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Wisconsin DNR's groundwater program awards free physical sand-tank aquifer models, through a competitive application, to teachers who complete a one-day instructor training, backed by video workshops on groundwater basics and Wisconsin geology. A grade 6-9 earth-science study guide, an interactive quiz, and printable classroom activities and posters round out the offering.
Link verified Oct 2026