The Blackstone River Monument, a small public fountain that celebrates and tells about the Blackstone River and the Blackstone River watershed, is an operational model of the river, designed to provide educational play experiences for the children at the Blanchard Early Childhood Center in North Uxbridge. The monument is part of the North Uxbridge Community Playground, a unique community resource built and maintained by community volunteers and dedicated to the spirits of R. Buckminster Fuller and Anne Hewlett Fuller. The monument was sponsored by the Uxbridge Public School System with support from the Center for the Enhancement of Science and Mathematics Education at Northeastern University and the Massachusetts Cultural Commission as administered by the Uxbridge Cultural Council, and with additional support from the Blanchard Parent Advisory Council and Unibank for Savings. The monument is about half a mile from the Blackstone River and former Blackstone Canal, in a city that owes its existence to the Industrial Revolution that began in America on the Blackstone River.
The monument includes an adjustable vertical fountain of water rising from the upper basin. A stream of water passes from the basin down a curved "riverbed" about sixteen feet to another slightly larger basin. The fountain is set up so that it can be powered by a solar-powered pump, but it can also use water from the public water supply.
Features along the simulated river include simple working water wheels (undershot and overshot) and working locks. These provide hands-on lessons in river and canal technology.
The mosaics covering the top and sides of the monument show the natural and human history of the river. The images include animals and plants of the region and pictures of people using the river. Ceramic plaques contain words that summarize the history that is illustrated in the mosaics. The mosaic images on the sides of the monument look like petroglyphs, emphasizing the river's ancient significance to people who have lived along it.
Words in blue ceramic tile letters around the top play surface of the monument tell the river's story:
Glaciers dug me, a million years ago! I drink from streams that drink from rain and snow. The Ocean drinks from me. Nipmuc people named me Pawtucket, a thousand years ago. I carried their canoes, I'll carry yours! I welcomed Reverend Blackstone. I powered Slater's mills two hundred years ago. I lifted boats to Worcester. My animals and plants need me! Please take good care of me!
The monument is meant to be actively used by children, who will learn as they:
1. Play in the water. Water play is good for all young children. It is an elemental sensory experience, an interaction with the physical world that strengthens senses, builds the imagination, and calms and focuses the mind. I think the importance of water play has something to do with the fact that our bodies are mostly water, and life evolved from water creatures. To complement water play at the monument, teachers can show books or videos about water that would show waterfalls; giant ocean waves; the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation (shown in the mosaic on the drinking fountain); whirlpools; tides; river systems (how small rivers join to become big rivers as they flow to the ocean); river-carved canyons; flash floods; quicksand and bogs; and the differences between brooks, rivers, ponds, lakes, swamps, marshes, and oceans. Many lessons can be learned from simple experiments with water that demonstrate boiling, condensing, freezing, snowflakes, etc. Related Explore and Discover concept boards and Explore and Discover exhibits are also available at the Satellite Discovery.
2.Float boats in the basins and river. The boats can besticks, leaves, bits of styrofoam, folded paper or aluminum foil boats, orwhatever children might imagine. After reading stories about boats and talking about the Blackstone River, you might have them make tiny boats in the classroom to sail down the monument's river.
3.Put sand and stones in the basins and river. True, sand and gravel fill the locks (the straight-walled channels above the lower basin) and the lower basin, but they are easily cleared out. One of the primary facts about rivers is that they move soil, sand, and stones. You might show them the giant boulders of nearby Purgatory Chasm, and read the display there that explains how the chasm was formed. There are several theories, but all involve water from a melting glacier. The Blackstone River and its tributaries once were mighty torrents fed by the melting glacier, carrying away clay, sand, and stone, leaving the valley as we know it. (The trees, plants, and animals we see now developed in stages from a barren tundra.)
4.Put little square boards (cut from 1/4" plywood or plexiglass) in the aluminum slots of the lock gates to raise boats against the flow of water. The monument and its toy locks will help the kids understand something that most adults don't understand. Locks enable boats to move up and down rivers that are otherwise too rapid or shallow. A canal boat moves into a lock when the gate is open and the water is low. The gate closes behind it and the water rises, lifting the boat. Then the boat moves upstream through the next gate, which closes behind it, causing the water (and boat) to rise another "step". The locks work in reverse to let boats come down the river gently without getting stuck or being destroyed by rapids. Just a mile east, kids can see part of the old Blackstone canal, and some of the machinery that opened and closed the locks. A book about canals (see bibliography) would help kids picture how this looked "in the old days."
* Make little working water wheels, with help from teachers. Cut a pencil or 1/4 inch dowel so it fits into the slots in the aluminum blocks below the "mill dam" near the upper basin. Push it through a styrofoam disk about 1 1/4 inch in diameter. Make four to eight slots in the disk as shown, and insert "paddles" of plastic cut from something like a plastic soda bottle. Experiment! A water wheel usually needs a little adjusting so it turns freely without catching against the side or bottom of the raceway. The overshot wheel seems to work better than the undershot wheel. See a real working water-powered mill at Sturbridge Village. Sturbridge Village, incidentally, recreates New England life as it was lived during the years that the Blackstone Canal was built and used, so it's a great field trip for kids interested in the history of the Blackstone Canal and also the mills of the Blackstone River. The topic of water wheels provides a good opportunity to have kids think about what life would be like without electricity.
* Build beaver dams with sticks, sand, and pebbles. The first dams on the Blackstone River were beaver dams! Beaver dams were an important part of the local ecosystem, creating habitat for many water creatures and plants and holding water back so it would soak into the ground, recharging the aquifer. Read stories about beavers and muskrats and then show the children how to make little beaver dams and beaver and muskrat houses in the fountain. I don't know if we still have beavers in this watershed, but muskrats are fairly common. (They're shy, and often they live in burrows under the riverbank instead of in mounds of reeds, so we often don't see them even though we might be near them.)
* Look for different kinds of animals in the mosaic. The Blackstone River Valley is still home to many kinds of animals, and all depend in some way on water. Children have a natural interest in animals. The monument can help them see how plants and animals depend on each other and how they also depend on rain, rivers, ground water, clean air and clean water, and sunshine. Read books about animals and talk with the children about the habitats the river provides for many of the local animals.
* Learn about local history. Local history begins with natural history, especially the last glacier carving the landscape, creating a hospitable platform for the populations of plants, animals, and humans that have filled the landscape in the last 15,000 years. The Blackstone River Valley is a perfect microcosm of what has happened in many places in our world in the last three hundred years: European settlers displacing native people, battles for religious and political freedom, a transition from agricultural life to industrial life, capitalism funding technologies of production and transportation to create great benefits and great change, struggles between workers and capitalists, pollution growing until it becomes unbearable, and now current events - "whatever it is that is happening now." What is happening now includes people using automobiles, airplanes, electricity, telephones, computers, and TV; continuing immigration and assimilation of people from other cultures; businesses based on information technology; and environmental restoration. The New England Science Center in Worcester is a wonderful source to learn about the natural history, including bones of the mastodons that once roamed this neighborhood. The public libraries, Old Sturbridge Village, and the National Park Service and the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor can teach children much about the human history of the region. Hopefully the images on the fountain will help inspire this search.
* Read the words on the monument with their teachers. The interesting textures may invite pre-readers to trace the big blue letters with their fingers, and hopefully the plaques will capture their interest as "pages" written about their town and their river. The monument is meant to be a kind of children's book, but in a medium that invites and supports hands-on experimentation and play.
The goal of the monument is to increase children's' (and adults') appreciation of the river, the watershed, and local history, and to provide a safe, inspiring, and novel environment in which children can experiment with materials, motion, and energy while pretending wonderful things. The River's Stories.
The River's Stories
The words on the monument are shown below, along with some background information and ideas for discussions and activities with kids.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution began as artisans made water powered machines for mill owners' factories. Workers ran machines to make goods the owners sold. The owners got rich because the machines were so fast. Workers formed labor unions to bargain with owners for better pay and healthier workplaces.
The "goods" the machines made were mainly thread and cloth. It would be good to show children the kind of clothing that people wore before 1700. Clothing was expensive because thread and cloth were made by hand. Now, because of the Industrial Revolution, clothing is inexpensive, and today's clothing is smooth and even, and full of color and variety. Mills also powered machines like lathes and saws that workers used to make things of wood and metal. Plymouth Plantation can show what life was like before the Industrial Revolution. Old Sturbridge Village and the Slater Mill in Pawtucket can show what life was like during the Industrial Revolution. There are local historians in Uxbridge who can show the children the Uxbridge Mills.
Native Americans
For thousands of years, Native Americans fished, hunted, farmed, and gathered berries, nuts, and wild rice along the river. Then white settlers forced them away from their valley, and white peoples' factories and cities polluted the river. Now we are learning that people of all races can live here, and we are learning to make the river clean again.
Unless we tell them, children don't know that the life style we know begun in just the last 1/4 inch of a human time line a hundred feet long. Humans evolved in a setting very different from the setting we were born into. Native people (which all of our distant ancestors were, mostly in lands far away) really knew and understood the land and its life forms, making their own shelter and clothing, finding their own food. It would be good to have the children soak acorns and make acorn meal, or grind corn between two stones to make cornmeal, or find some clay at a nearby excavation and form it into pinch pots for firing into ceramic dishes. Have a meal of corn, beans, squash, dried raspberries, and duck or venison (if someone knows a friendly hunter). Learn about edible and poisonous plants. Build little wigwams from sticks and bark. Be sure to read to the children A River Ran Wild: An Environmental History, by Lynne Cherry.
It's probably not good to tell very young children all the gruesome details of the violence that took place in this valley (read the early history of Rhode Island and Massachusetts), but we owe it to them to not paint too rosy a picture about the mythical first Thanksgiving. Contact Nipmuc Tribal Acknowledgement Project, Worcester 508-753-0440.
Anadromous Fish
When settlers built mill dams, the salmon could not swim upstream to lay their eggs. Someday at the dams we will build steps that fish can jump up. Locks for fish! Baby fish we put in the river will come back to lay eggs when they grow up, and their babies will come back when they grow up!
When the first mills and mill dams were being built, farmers in the valley actually destroyed some of the dams because the dams were blocking the return of the salmon, which were an important food source for the farmers! In the lower reaches of the river, experimental restocking in the last few years has shown that some anadromous fish can be successfully reintroduced to the river. In other parts of the country, conservation laws require fish ladders at every dam. For more information, call Save the Bay (in Providence) 401-272-3540, and Riverways Program (in Boston, part of the Department of Environmental Management) 617-727-1614 ext. 358.
The Blackstone Canal
In the 1820s, people built the Blackstone Canal so boats could carry goods 45 miles between the inland city of Worcester and the ocean port of Providence. Canal locks lifted the canal boats to get past waterfalls and shallow places. Horses pulled the canal boats.
Children and teachers in Uxbridge have access to many sources of information about the Blackstone Canal. Part of the canal is only half a mile away. There is a replica canal boat (the Lady Carrington) to ride in; museums to visit; and speakers to visit the school. Here are some numbers to call: Canal Commission 401-762-0250; Uxbridge Historical Society 278-2609 or 278-5544; Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission (at Broad Meadow Brook Visitor Center in Worcester) 754-7363.
The Blackstone River flows through the following cities on its way from Worcester to Narragansett Bay:
Worcester Millbury Sutton Grafton Northbridge Uxbridge Millville Blackstone Woonsocket Cumberland Lincoln Pawtucket Providence
You can have the kids trace the river course on a map. The river was important in the development of most of these towns. Many formed around river-powered mills.
Glaciers
20,000 years ago, a glacier a mile thick dug the Blackstone Valley. As the ice sheet moved, it scraped away mountains. As it melted, it left huge piles of sand and stones. Small plants and then trees grew. Much later, people built farms, roads, and towns. And that's what you see today!
It's hard to imagine ice a mile thick covering this land, but that's what happened. See the bibiography for books to help you and your students understand how our landscape was shaped. Bring in some travel books or National Geographic magazines and compare the local landscape to other landscapes. Have the kids create a timeline with pictures showing the progression: from jagged mountains > snow accumulating into a glacier > the glacier scraping the mountains > the glacier melting and leaving piles of stone and sand > a tundra > mosses and grasses > shrubs and small trees > full forest > early agriculture > today
.Wetlands
Wetlands like Rice City Pond are homes for ducks, turtles, fish, muskrats, frogs, and other creatures. Water standing in wetlands strains down through mud and sand into cracks in the rock deep underground, and when we pump it from a well, many miles away, it's clean enough to drink!
Wetlands are very important to our drinking water supply, and to many of the animals that live here. Rice City Pond is the wide place in the river upstream from the dam and rapids just half a mile east of the Blanchard School. At the beach, show the children how you can dig into the sand and find water several feet away from the water's edge. See also the "River Cutters" curriculum.
Reverend Blackstone
Rev. William Blackstone was the first white person to live in Boston, and the first white settler in the Blackstone Valley. He loved to read, he was kind to children, and he planted the first apple orchards in New England. He was a friend to the native people, and to Roger Williams, the founder of Providence.
Rev. Blackstone and Roger Williams were very interesting people. Read about them and tell your students about them!
Christa McAuliffe
Christa McAuliffe
1948 - 1986
Explore and discover!
This little plaque is hidden on the underside of the upper basin. Bruce Dean, the teacher at Uxbridge High School who designed the wonderful playground at the North Uxbridge Community Playground, received a Christa McAuliffe fellowship that helped him get support for the Monument, and that helped fund other projects of his that promote learning through discovery.
The "Petroglyphs"
The base of the monument is covered with a mosaic that includes petroglyph-like figures that depict the history of the Blackstone River Valley from the creation of the Earth to the present. Petroglyphs are paintings or carvings on stone done by people who lived long ago.
Making the Water Fountain Work
* The water for the fountain has two sources: Teachers can turn on a faucet inside the shed or recirculate water using a solar-powered pump.
* Teachers can change the way the water comes out of the fountainhead. The fountainhead has a central nozzle and a circle of smaller nozzles. The central nozzle is fed by one hose, and the smaller nozzles are fed by another hose. Both hoses enter the shed floor at the corner of the shed nearest the monument. The two hoses have valves (called "fountainhead valves" in the figure below) that teachers (or kids, with supervision) can turn by hand to change the way the water comes out of the fountain. (Note that if both fountainhead valves are turned off, the fountain stops.) These valves work to control the streams of water from the fountainhead regardless of whether the water is coming from the solar-powered pump or from the public water supply.
* Figure 2 shows how the water recirculation system works. A bucket of gravel buried underneath the outlet of the lower basin has a drain pipe attached to it which carries water back down to a reservoir. The solar-powered pump draws water from the reservoir and pumps it out through the fountainhead. The water flows continuously out of the upper basin, down the river model, into the lower basin, and down into the buried bucket again.
To fill the reservoir, run the fountain from the public water supply by turning off the solar powered pump and turning on the public water supply to the fountain. Run the fountain for about 30 minutes using the water from the school building's outdoor water faucet. This will fill the reservoir, and if the pump is turned on and the sun is shining, the pump will run.
* The solar panel is a marvel! (Or rather, when you see this system in action, you realize that the sun beams down an incredible amount of energy!) Although photovoltaic panels are only about 11%-12% efficient in turning sunlight into electricity, this 17.5 inch by38.8-inch panel (a Kyocera Model K-51 purchased from Defender Industries, Inc., tel. 914-632-3001) puts out 51 watts on a sunny day! We put aluminum sides around the panel to support a protector screen, and we made the sides like a reflector oven to reflect enough extra light onto the panel to make up for the shadow of the screen.
The pump (a 12 volt Solar Star Model 1000 , purchased from Photo-Comm Inc., tel. 800-544-6466) is a diaphram pump that is self-priming - that is, it can suck water up from the reservoir even if the hose is initially full of air. It should not be allowed to run for extended periods when there is no water in the reservoir for it to pump. After running dry for a long period, an inexpensive rubber membrane inside the pump chamber will fail and will need to be replaced.
Note for future improvements: The problem with this system is that the reservoir fills with gravel, and much of the water that leaves the lower basin of the fountain never returns to the reservoir, so after the pump runs for a short time, it runs out of water. Also, the water is not always clean. A better design for the future would be to actually dig a well and put in a submersible pump, which could be powered by the same solar panel that currently runs the self-priming pump. Photocomm, Inc. (800-544-6466) sells submersibles. The subsoil under the playground is sand and gravel, and it is likely that the water table is not more than thirty feet below the surface.
The wall switch inside the shed turns the pump on and off. We have connected the pump to a thermostat which is set to prevent the pump from running when there might be ice in the hoses. Despite this precaution, it is best to keep the pump switch turned off during the winter months, because the pump could be damaged by freezing.
River Monument Glossary
anadromous fish - Fish that go from salt water to fresh water or up rivers to spawn (e.g. shad, salmon)
aqueduct: A bridge that supports a canal.
aquifer: An underground water supply
balanced beam: The timber on a miter gate used to move the gate.
barometer: An instrument that determines air pressure.
bypass flume: An artificial channel that conducts water past a gate or barrier.
canal: An artificial waterway for transportation or irrigation; a river altered by locks, levees, and other devices to permit navigation
clutch: A device for coupling two shafts so they will turn together.
cofferdam: An enclosure to divert water from the bed of a stream to permit construction.
compass: An instrument with a magnetic needle which determines magnetic north.
condensation: The process by which a gas or a vapor, such as steam, cools and is reduced to a liquid form.
culvert: An arched drain under a road or canal.
ecosystem: A system made up of a community of animals, plants and bacteria and its interrelated physical and chemical environment.
engineer: A designer or builder of machinery.
gate valve: A sliding door that regulates the flow of water.
gear: A toothed wheel which transfers motion from or to a shaft.
glacier: A large mass of ice and snow that forms in areas where the rate of snowfall constantly exceeds the rate at which the snow melts: it moves slowly outward from the center of accumulation or down a mountain until it melts or breaks away; in geologic time during the Pleistocene Epoch (Era) a large part of the Northern Hemisphere was intermittently covered with glaciers.
grade: The steepness of a slope, expressed as the vertical distance divided by the horizontal distance.
guard lock: A lock that protects the canal from floods.
Industrial Revolution: The change in social and economic organization resulting from the replacement of hand tools by machine and power tools and the development of large-scale industrial production (occurred in England around 1760's)
levee: An embankment built alongside a river to prevent high water from flooding bordering land.
lock: An enclosure in a canal with gates at each end, used to raise and lower boats.
miter gates: A pair of swinging gates used in a lock that meet at an angle, or miter, so that they will stay closed against water pressure.
paddle valve: A paddle-like door in a lock gate that regulates the flow of water.
photovoltaic panel- a type of solar collector that converts sunlight to generate electricity
pile: A long pole or plank driven into the earth.
portage: The carrying of boats and goods over land between navigable waters; also the route over which boats and goods are carried.
precipitation: Rain, snow, hail, sleet - forms in clouds from condensation
pulley: One or more sheaves within a block, used to change the direction of or increase the power on a rope.
rack and pinion: A gear whereby a toothed bar (a rack) is moved back and forth as a pinion (a toothed wheel) is turned.
shaft: A bar used to transmit the turning motion of wheels and gears.
sheave: A grooved wheel, around which a rope is pulled.
slack water: Water that doesn't move; still water.
solar panel: A box that takes advantage of sunlight by raising temperatures to heat air or water or converting sunlight to electricity
towline: A rope used to pull a boat.
towpath: A path along the canal used by the mules or horses that pulled the boats.
valve: A device to stop or regulate a flow of water.
water brake: A device to slow or stop motion by applying the resistance of water.
watershed: A natural drainage area drained by a system of brooks, streams, and rivers. A divide between one drainage area or basin and another.
waterwheel: A wheel that turns by the action of flowing water.
weir: A small dam that regulates the level or flow of water.
wetland - Swamps or marshes that provide the necessary environment for many forms of wildlife.
winch: A device with a crank used for lifting and hauling
Bibliography
Note: This bibliography is just a sample of what's available. Most libraries in Central Massachusetts have a computer system that you can use to find many more books. You simply enter key words like "Blackstone Canal" and "glacier," and the computer lists books on these subjects. If your local library doesn't have the book you want, the librarian will order it for you through the Interlibrary Loan system.
Anadromous Fish (salmon, shad, and other fish that swim up rivers from the ocean to breed and lay eggs):
Nature's Children: Salmon, by Elma Schemenauer. Grolier Education Corp. 1986. j597.55 S3235.
Canals:
The Erie Canal, Ralph K. Andrist, American Heritage Publishing Co., 1964.
River and Canal, Edward Boyer, Holiday House, 1986.
America's Early Canals, Tim McNeese, Crestwood House, 1993. Interesting reading for older children. j386.4 M1692.
Working in the Blackstone River Valley: Exploring the Heritage of Industrialization, Douglas M. Reynolds and Marjory Myers, Editors, Sheahan Printing, 1990. (Background material for the interested teacher. In the Worcester Room of the Worcester Public Library, noncirculating.) Q974.43 B6312w.
The Story of the Erie Canal, R. Conrad Stein, Children's Press, Chicago, IL 1985.
Christa McAuliffe
Christa McAuliffe: Pioneer Space Teacher, by Charlene W. Billings. Enslow Publ. 1986 jB M117b.
A Journal for Christa (Christa McAuliffe, Teacher in Space), Grace George Corrigan, University of Nebraska Press, 1993
Earth and Glaciers
Glaciers, Wendell V. Tangborn. Thomas Y. Crowell Junior Books, 1988. j551.312 T964g. (Good book for kids. Shows how glaciers work.)
How the Earth Works. John Farndon, Readers Digest Association, Inc. 1992. QJ550 F235H. (Includes section on glaciers. Describes experiments kids can do to learn about the earth.)
River Cutters Teachers Guide, GEMS, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720. (510)642-7771
Industrialization
Window, by Jeannie Baker. Green Willow Books, 1991. (All pictures. Shows how life changes by looking out a window, watching a rural community change to a city community.)
The Little House, by Virginia Lee Burton. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1969. (About a house and how its surroundings change from country to city.)
Anno's USA, by Mitsumasa Anno. Philomel Books, 1983. (History of USA in pictures.)
Mr. Murphey's Marvelous Invention, by Eileen Christelow. Houghton Mifflin Co. (Clarion Books) 1983. (About a pig who makes an invention for his wife that backfires.)
No Star Nights, by Anna Egan Smucker. Alfred A. Knops, Inc. 1989. (About life in a mill town - gritty, realistic view.)
Cotton Mill Town, by Kathleen Hershey. Dutton Children's Books. 1993. (Great illustrations. Nicer view of a mill town.)
Native American Culture
A River Ran Wild: An Environmental History, Lynne Cherry, Gulliver Green Book, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1992.
Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, by Susan Jeffers. Dial Books, 1991. (Words of Chief Seattle. Nice book, nice paintings.)
Sleepy River, by Hanna Bandes. Philomel Books, 1993. (Great illustrations. What a mother and son see on a night trip down the river.)
Keepers of the Earth, by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac. Fulcrum, Inc. 1989. qj 398 c126k. (North American Indian stories and hands-on activities, for ages 5-12, to help kids feel that they are a part of their surroundings. Includes a teacher's guide.)
Keepers of the Animals, M. Caduto and J. Bruchac. Fulcrum Publ. 1991. (Much like Keepers of the Earth. Comes with a teacher's guide.)
Organizations to Contact
Children will love and remember the books you read to them, but nothing is better than personal contact! Visits to the organizations below, or visits from people who belong to these organizations, can provide wonderful learning experiences.
Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, National Park Service, 1 Depot Sq., Woonsocket, R.I. 02895
Canal Commission 401-762-0259
Massachusetts Audobon Society, Environmental Affairs Office 508-755-8899
Nashua River Watershed Association, 592 Main St., Groton, 01450
Nipmuc Tribal Acknowledgement Project 508-865-9800
Regional Environmental Council 508-799-9139
Riverways Program 617-727-1614 ext. 358
Save the Bay, Providence, R.I. 401-272-3540
Uxbridge Historical Society 508-278-2609
Worcester Redevelopment Authority Environmental Planning Office 508-799-5500