A story to teach children not to waste water

A WATER STORY FOR CHILDREN

We have already seen how important it is to not stop telling stories to children and above all not to replace the good habit of telling them stories in the evening with a cartoon on television or a game on a cell phone or tablet.

READ ALSO: Children's stories: Let's get back into the habit of reading them to our children.

Benefits of Fairy Tales for Children's Growth

Fairy tales offer many benefits to children, starting with strengthening the bond between parents and children. Fairy tales also offer children the opportunity to learn new behavior patterns and how to behave in difficult situations. Reading fairy tales also allows children to develop their linguistic, intellectual, and relational skills: by following the adventures of their favorite characters, children expand their vocabulary and acquire curiosity and creativity . Fairy tales also teach us to be generous, to have patience and courage, and also to respect the environment we live in and to understand the importance of not wasting the resources that nature has given us. Among these is water , a resource to which our reader Luigi Gianola Bazzini , educator, popularizer, and writer, has dedicated a beautiful fairy tale, a story written to explain to his children how essential it is not to waste such a precious resource.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Waterways, the most beautiful routes

OUR READER LUIGI'S WATER TALE

Here is the story written by our reader Luigi in which the little ones, through the adventures of " Gocciolina ", will be able to immerse themselves in the magical world of water and nature:

DROPS' JOURNEYS

Water, dear children , is the substance that makes the greatest number of journeys in the magical world of nature: from a stream it can go into a lake or a river; from the river it can go partly underground, partly into another river or into the sea.

Here, the sun causes it to rise into the sky to form clouds, and... from the clouds, often countless drops of water fall, which together become rain. One of these is called " Droplet ," which has just arrived with other drops and droplets from an August storm, on a hedge.

“Aahh!” she exclaims, as she, along with many sisters and friends, climbs down from a long, shiny laurel leaf.

“What a lovely slide! How fast it goes!” and as they fall into a puddle under the fragrant hedge, he shouts again: “Hey friends, smell how fragrant we are now!”

The puddle widens until it becomes a small lake, then it finds a slope and the water rushes towards a ditch, and here all the drops and drips form an ever-longer line, and as it continues to rain, this line widens and swells until it turns into a stream that takes Gocciolina on a fantastic journey.

"Here are the blades of grass moving and caressing us, look at those stones..., of all colors, ooohh! Watch out for the frogs, if they dive they'll make us jump; eee oop, jump! ... Splash, everything!", thus the adventures of these drops continue, then suddenly everything gets bigger, here they are, arrived in the Taro River which flows towards the great plain.

“My goodness!” says Gocciolina, “So many of us! And so many colors to see! Look over there under the bridge, they're all gray, and then over there near those acacia trees, they're turning green! Hey, who's this?”

“I’m a Chub,” says a small silver fish through the bubbles, darting through the drops to join a school of other fish.

But the journey doesn't end there, and continues on to the great Po River , where at a certain point, many drops make a very high leap and... splash! They fall from a small waterfall into a man-made canal, and our little drop is among them.

“Where are we going now?” our friend asks herself as she slips between the snails, toads and larvae that populate the edge of the canal;

In front of them, then, appears a large field full of watermelons, eee … down in the earth;

A droplet ends up right under one of these plants and travels in the dark through the tunnels in the soil, until sluurp, a root sucks up large quantities of drops.

Another journey that takes her to quench her thirst with a fruit! Inside a watermelon, no less, so what now?

“Everything in here is red, mmm, it's so good, it's all sweet!” says “Droplet,” who is now resting; but a short while later, loud bangs are heard from inside the watermelon: “Pooch!, Thuum! Spack!” and the little drops don't have time to get scared before they see the light of day again. What could have happened? The hail has arrived with big, fat stones that have hit the field, and these cousins, frozen by the drops, are breaking many of those watermelons as they fall; Droplet has fallen right onto a hailstone on the ground: “Brrrrr! You're so cold!” our friend says to the plum-sized hailstone, and it responds: “If the sun comes out now, we'll come back like you. Here, there are so many of us, all united by the cold that lies between certain clouds. Go, slide away, and then we'll follow you!”

And off again into another ditch, where she meets water fleas and a friendly whiskered catfish , on and on until she reaches a pond where a pipe enters, discharging black, stinky water. In this sewer drain, the drops turn a little black, a little brown, a little gray, and take on a foul odor. Here, Gocciolina is sad, partly because she's no longer traveling; but one night, some floodgates open and they set off again at full speed, until a large pipe drops them all into the Adriatic Sea. After a few minutes, Gocciolina, surrounded by all her new friends, feels cleaner and no longer smells that terrible odor: "Mmmm, but now everything smells salty, doesn't it, sisters?"

Meanwhile, the waves arrive, oop, swaash! Ooop, Swash!, “Hooray for the swing, up and down ooooop, fantastic.”

One morning in late August, following other drops on a foaming wave, Gocciolina ends up straight in a child's bucket. He carries her to the beach and is about to tip her onto his sandcastle, when she hears a voice: "Do you know I'm here?" Our drop has positioned itself next to a shell and speaks like a man with a loudspeaker: "I am a tiny part of all the water you see, dear child, and in a few days I have taken so many journeys and trips you can't even imagine, and then the big drops told me that I will take so many more: you will be able to find me in your sink when you brush your teeth, or in your glass of water, and even in your eyes when you cry! So, am I important or not, my friend? Treat me well and I will be very, very useful to you."

The child is speechless and looks at the water in his bucket and then, slowly, he carries it to the dinghy, pulls it near the rocks where he pours the water, with all the drops, onto a wave among the waves, shouting: “Have fun, my friend Droplet, I will remember you and your travels every time I think of all the places and things where you could be.”

And then: “ Mom!, Dad!, I want to know everything about water, if you explain it to me, I'll tell you a fantastic story , you won't believe it! ”.

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OUR TIPS FOR NOT WASTING WATER:

• How to save water at home every day
• How to teach children not to waste water. Five very simple rules.