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Project Grade 6 Health & Consumer Science

Three Days Without the Tap: A Skelthorne Home Water Plan

A three-session grade 6 project in which students size, price, and lay out a fictional family's stored-water supply for a three-day water main outage.

Objectives

  1. Students will calculate the total gallons a household needs for a three-day water outage.
  2. Students will solve an equation to find how many containers of a fixed size hold that total.
  3. Students will design a labeled storage and rotation plan that fits a stated shelf and budget.

Vocabulary

Water main
A big underground pipe that carries drinking water beneath the streets to a neighborhood. Smaller service lines branch off it to reach each building.

Also: outage, rotation, food-grade container

Teacher overview

A water main breaks somewhere in the United States roughly every two minutes, and the households above the break lose pressure with no warning. Over three sessions students size a stored-water supply for a fictional family in Skelthorne, solve for the number of containers that supply takes, and lay the containers out on a shelf that has a fixed width. The deliverable is a labeled plan sheet presented at a mock neighborhood association meeting. One misconception to head off is the assumption that bottled water is the only option, which skips the option of filling clean, reusable containers from the tap before an outage, so the brief asks students to price both and defend the mix they choose.

Three Days Without the Tap: A Skelthorne Home Water Plan — Grade 6 Health & Consumer Science
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Project Brief

Your group is preparing a home water plan for the Bergstrom family, who live in the fictional town of Skelthorne. Their street sits above an old cast iron main, and the utility has warned that a repair could shut the water off for up to three days.

The household. Four people live in the home. They also have one large dog.

The fictional Skelthorne County planning card. The county emergency guide in this scenario tells households to store 1 gallon per person per day, to plan for 3 days, and to add 1 extra gallon per day for a large dog. It also says stored tap water must go in clean food-grade containers, must be labeled with the date it was filled, and must be poured out and refilled every six months.

What you can buy in this scenario. A 5-gallon food-grade jug costs $9.00. A 2.5-gallon jug costs $5.00. A sealed case of bottled water holding 3 gallons costs $4.00 and needs no refilling until the date printed on the case.

Your constraints.

  • The plan must cover every person and the dog for the full three days.
  • The total spent must stay at or under $40 in this fictional scenario.
  • Every container must fit on one shelf that is 30 inches wide and 14 inches deep.
  • At least one container must be a sealed case, so the family has water that needs no rotation.
  • The plan must say where the shelf is and why that spot is safe.

What you turn in. One labeled plan sheet and a three-minute talk at the neighborhood meeting. The sheet must show the total gallons needed, the equation you solved for the number of containers, the cost total, a scale drawing of the shelf, and the rotation schedule.

Milestones

  1. Session 1, size the supply. Use the county planning card to find the total gallons the household needs for three days, counting the dog. Convert that total to quarts as a check. Then write and solve an equation of the form gallons per container times number of containers equals the total gallons, using one container size you are considering. Turn in the gallon total, the quart total, and the solved equation.
  2. Session 2, price and pack. Choose a mix of containers that reaches your gallon total, add the cost, and check it against the forty-dollar limit. Measure your chosen containers, then draw them to scale on grid paper inside a shelf 30 inches wide and 14 inches deep. Turn in the cost table and the scale drawing.
  3. Session 3, rotate and present. Build the rotation schedule showing which containers get emptied and refilled and in what month, and mark which containers need no refilling. Finish the plan sheet and present it in three minutes at the neighborhood meeting, then answer one question from the audience.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Rubric
Criterion 1 Emerging 2 Developing 3 Proficient 4 Advanced
Sizing the supply The gallon total is missing or ignores the number of days. People and days are counted but the dog or the conversion to quarts is left out. The gallon total covers four people, three days, and the dog, and the quart conversion checks it. The totals are correct and the group shows what the total would become if the outage ran a fourth day.
Equation and container count No equation appears, or the container count is guessed. An equation is written but not solved, or the solution is not tied back to containers. An equation of the form gallons per container times number of containers equals the total gallons is written, solved, and used to justify the container count. The equation is solved and the group compares two container sizes with a second equation before choosing.
Meeting the constraints The cost is over the limit or the shelf drawing is missing. The cost fits but the drawing is not to scale, or no sealed case is included. Cost is at or under forty dollars, the drawing is to scale inside the stated shelf, and at least one sealed case is included. All constraints are met and the group explains what it gave up to keep the plan on the shelf and in budget.
Rotation and presentation The rotation schedule is missing or the talk runs past three minutes. A schedule appears but does not say which containers skip rotation. The schedule names refill months, marks the containers that need no refilling, and the talk covers the whole sheet in three minutes. The sheet reads clearly on its own and the presenter answers the audience question with a number taken from the sheet.

Differentiation

Support

Give these groups the gallon total already computed and start them at the container equation, so the project centers on solving and packing rather than on the opening scaling. Provide graph paper pre-marked with the shelf outline and a scale key of one square per two inches.

Extension

Ask the group to rewrite the plan for an apartment with no shelf space wider than 18 inches, then explain in writing which container sizes stop working and what they would buy instead.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "main," "outage," "rotation," and "food-grade" with photographs of a repair crew at an open street cut, a dark faucet, a calendar with two marked months, and a jug labeled food-grade. Provide the sentence frame: "Our household needs ___ gallons, so we will store ___ containers of ___ gallons each."

Extensions

Have students compare their plan against the grades the ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave US drinking water and wastewater, a C- and a D+, and write a short paragraph on what those grades suggest about how often a plan like theirs might be needed.