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Pend Oreille Water Festival

May contain: Pend Oreille Water Festival logo
Celebrating 28 years!
An adult and children engaged in an educational activity with a watering can and materials on a table.

Outdoor Educational Event for the fifth grade students of Bonner County

2025 Pend Oreille Water Festival

The Pend Oreille Water Festival is an annual, comprehensive, hands-on, environmental education program for all fifth grade students in Bonner County, Idaho. The Water Festival includes an interactive in-class lesson presented by natural resource professionals followed by an Outdoor Field Trip.

The 2025 Water Festival Field Trip will be held at Riley Creek Campground in Laclede on Wednesday and Thursday, May 14th and 15th.

 

In-Class Natural Resource Education

A hand making ink prints and writing on fabric, surrounded by ink pads and print blocks.
Animal Prints

From late March through April, a natural resource professional will visit each classroom where students will view their watershed on a colorful 10’ X 10’ floor map and learn about concepts that they will explore in greater detail at the Water Festival Field Trip.

Outdoor Field Trip

Approximately 400 fifth graders (about 200 each day) from 15 public and private schools will engage with experts in their field and Sandpoint High School student mentors in multi-disciplinary activities that focus on our most precious resource- Water and the Clark Fork-Pend Oreille Watershed. Students will have the opportunity to touch, see, hear and creatively think about the dynamic world around them as they rotate through five different, inter-active, instructional stations: Fisheries, Watersheds, Water Quality, Animal Tracks, and  Fur Trapping Era.

A uniformed officer showing a fish to children with educational materials in the background.

We would like to give a big thank you to the businesses, agencies, and individuals who have supported the Water Festival over the years. Contributions are invaluable in keeping the Water Festival as a mainstay in the curriculum of our area's fifth-graders.

Thank you to 2023 Sponsors!

We would like to give a big thank you to the businesses, agencies, and individuals who have supported the Water Festival over the years. Contributions are invaluable in keeping the Water Festival as a mainstay in the curriculum of our area's fifth-graders.

Please help support the Water Festival by sending your tax-deductible donation to:

Donation Form!
People inside a tent structure participating in an activity, with nature visible in the background.

Pend Oreille Water Festival
c/o Bonner SWCD
1224 Washington Ave., Ste. 101
Sandpoint, ID 83864

 

If you have any questions please contact:

Gail Bolin, Festival Coordinator
waterfestival.bonner@gmail.com
Phone: 208-627-3292​