VALLEY CITY, N.D. (International Water Institute) – On May 11th, students from St. Catherine’s Catholic School’s 5th and 6th grade classes launched their River of Dreams canoes into the Sheyenne River.

The International Water Institute’s River of Dreams program engages students to better understand their watershed through reading, writing, art, and geography. Students experience virtual tours of their watershed, see where their local river flows, and visualize its watershed. The students decorated a trackable, 14” cedar canoe and wrote a dream for its river journey. A web page is created for each canoe which includes the date and location of launch along with a picture of the canoe and “dream” story. Canoes found by area residents can be logged into the database by following instructions and recording the unique ID number which accompany each canoe. View decorated canoes, read dream stories, and see where they are discovered at riverofdreams.org

Funding for this program was provided by the North Dakota Red River Joint Water Resource District and the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

The International Water Institute is a not for profit organization formed to foster watershed stewardship through leadership in decision support, environmental monitoring, and education programming.

The students from St. Catherine’s 5th and 6th grade classes with Mrs. Dawn Ihry. On May 11th, the students were able to decorate small wooden canoes and launch them into the Sheyenne River in Valley City. If any of these canoes are found along their journey to Hudson Bay, they can be logged on riverofdreams.org so the students are able to see how far their canoe has gone.