Life Without Taps

As part of our Science topic 'The Water Cycle', we learned what life would be like with no taps to get fresh water.

We are very lucky in Scotland as we can access fresh, clean water instantly. In our class we had between 4 and 12 taps per home! 

Across the world, one tenth of the population do not have access to clean water in their home. We were shocked to hear that some children have to walk over 3km a day to collect water and this might have to be done 2 or 3 times a day. 

As a result, many children across the world are missing out on an education as most of their day is spent collecting water for the family. 

We played a game called 'Life Without Taps' to experience what it is like to be in their shoes. The children were grouped into 6 families and they had to take it in turns to walk to the river and collect 1 bucket of water until they had enough for all of their seven basic needs: drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning, animals, food crops and cash crops. In order to receive their bucket of water, they had to work as a team to colour in a large bucket, place it inside their plastic bucket and carry it on their head down the river. However, some of these needs required more than 1 bucket and they had to make more than 1 trip. 

Along the way, the children were given chance cards with real life problems the children might face, therefore this affected their journey. For example, one card said 'The water collected from the river was dirty and 3 of your family members have been infected by a disease called Cholera. You must stop work for 5 minutes.' 

The children gained a much deeper understanding of what it is like for children who have no clean water, as they found this task challenging and they required to work very hard as a family to collect the water they needed.

Max said, "I thought the game was fun but hard, so I can imagine what it is like for them."

Jo-Ann said, "I feel sorry for the children who do this because they miss out on an education."

Katie said, "I realise how hard it is for them because they have to walk really far and they do that everyday." 

Next week we will be writing to our local MP to raise awareness of this situation.