A team of fourth- and fifth-grade students from Steele Creek Elementary School in Charlotte recently won first place in the second Autobell Car Wash Creek Challenge at UNC Charlotte.
The morning contest capped weeks of study and activities focusing on science and water quality topics, as well as local history and geography at eight participating Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools: Elizabeth Traditional Elementary, Endhaven Elementary, Irwin Academic Center Elementary, Huntersville Elementary, Lake Wylie Elementary, Lebanon Road Elementary, Parkside Elementary and Steele Creek Elementary. All but Lebanon Road took part in the activities at UNC Charlotte.
Activities included building model dams and model aquifers and displaying knowledge of the water cycle, aquifers, aquatic plants and animals, and related vocabulary words.
The morning began with the Water Wizard Quiz, a spelling bee-like activity in which teams of two students per school answered questions about Mecklenburg County’s creeks. Questions included:
- Who owns the water in Charlotte’s creeks? (Answer: We all do; they are waters of the state.)
- How many miles of creeks are there in Mecklenburg County? (Answer: About 3,000)
- How did Sugar Creek get its name? (Answer: From the Sugaree Indians, who once lived in this area.)
A two-student team from Lake Wylie Elementary School won the Water Wizard Quiz.
The yearly event is sponsored by Autobell Car Wash; the company’s CEO, Chuck Howard, was a judge in the Water Wizard Quiz and awarded the prizes to the winners in each event. Prizes were medals, gift cards, team trophies and two iPad minis for the Water Wizard Quiz champions.
The Autobell Creek Challenge is produced by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and the UNC Charlotte Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education. Autobell in 2015 proposed creating and funding the project as a follow-up to the KEEPING WATCH on WATER: City of Creeks project in 2015, a partnership of the Urban Institute and the UNC Charlotte College of Arts + Architecture.
More information about the challenge is on the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute website.