Free Printable Watershed Map Activity

This activity takes about forty minutes and needs paper, pencils and a walk outside. It works from ages eight upward, and it works whether you live beside a river or in the middle of a city.

What you are trying to find out

Where does the rain that lands on your street actually go? That is the whole question. Everything else is method.

Part 1: draw first, check later (15 minutes)

Before going outside, have the child draw a rough map of the area they know — home, street, school, any park, any water they have seen. It does not need to be accurate. It needs to be theirs.

Then mark, with arrows, which way they think water flows. This prediction is the part most activities skip and the part that makes the walk interesting.

Part 2: the walk (20 minutes)

Take the map outside and look for four things:

• Slope. Stand still and work out which way the ground falls. A ball would tell you instantly — so would a small pour of water from a bottle onto a path.
• Drains and grates. Mark every one you find. These are the entrances to the system.
• Hard versus soft ground. Tarmac and roofs shed water immediately; grass and soil absorb some. Colour them differently on the map.
• Low points. Where does water sit after rain? Puddles are evidence.

Update the arrows as you go. Crossings-out are a good sign.

Part 3: follow it in your head (5 minutes)

Back home, trace the chain out loud: roof → gutter → driveway → gutter at the kerb → storm drain → ? Most children stop confidently at the drain. The next question is the good one: and then where?

Many local water authorities publish catchment maps, and some have an address lookup. Use it to check the prediction — after the prediction exists, not before.

Part 4: one thing that would change it

Finish by asking what one change would alter where the water goes or what it carries. A rain barrel, a garden bed replacing paving, sweeping a driveway instead of hosing it, not fertilising before rain. Have them mark it on the map.

This turns an observation activity into a design activity, which is where the thinking gets interesting.

Extending it

• Younger children: stick to slope, puddles and drains. Skip the land-use colouring.
• Older children: estimate the roof area of the house and calculate roughly how much water runs off it in a 10 mm rainfall. The number is always larger than they expect.
• Groups: compare maps. Disagreements about which way the ground slopes are productive — resolve them with a bottle of water.

Want the printed version?

A printable pack with mapping pages, the crumpled-paper model instructions and a field observation log is included in the free activity pack we email out — sign up on the Free Resources page. The fuller version, with the pollution-tracing activity and answer notes, is in the Watershed Explorer Workbook.

Take it further

• What Is a Watershed? A Guide for Kids — the background explanation
• Mini Watershed Model Kit — a reusable tray version of the same idea

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Written by the Watershed Learning curriculum team. We write and test every resource we sell. Factual content is checked against current, reputable sources before publication and reviewed when we update the article. Spotted something wrong? Tell us — we would rather know.
Last updated: 19 August 2026.