Wingra ABCs
Our mission is to promote a healthy Lake Wingra through an active watershed community. Wingra ABCs encourages learning about all the beautiful things Lake Wingra’s watershed provides and understanding ways you can make an impact at home!
The variety of Wingra ABCs activities will help increase one’s familiarity with plants, places, wildlife, and water quality issues in the watershed. Explore the three buttons below to help get you started. First, the Wingra ABCs instruction document covers how you can couple activities together. Second, the Watershed Intro talking points gives brief summaries and prompting questions about what a watershed is and characteristics about Lake Wingra’s watershed. The Fun Facts & Learn more includes some descriptions and links to some of the more featured Wingra ABCs animals throughout the activities. This is great for any one wanting to do a deep dive into a handful of “letters.”
Explore Wingra ABCs Activities
Most activities are suited for elementary grades. However, some activities such as bingo, word search, and coloring are all age friendly!
Coloring Pages
Color a bullfrog, duck, great blue heron, muskrat, red-winged blackbird, or yellow perch. Download them further below! Images sized to print on normal paper.
Rhyming Worksheet
Circle words that rhyme with those inside the box. Great for early readers or preschoolers with adult help!
Scavenger Hunts
Journey around the watershed and look for different things in the Wingra ABCs.
Math Worksheet
Practice counting using the Wingra ABC pictures and then tracing numbers 1-5
Alphabet Practice
Practice ABCs by tracing and spelling out words of five different wildlife found around Lake Wingra. A small picture for coloring is included.
Matching Game
Play an old fashion game of memory!
Bingo
Bingo cards have names and pictures of the Wingra ABCs. Flexible difficulty!
ABCs E-book
Read about each place, item, wildlife, or organism found around Lake Wingra. Each letter of the alphabet has a mascot. Can you think of others for each letter?
Word Games
Challenge yourself to a letter scramble, word search or crossword puzzle. The word search and crossword are suited for older kids or adults.
Wingra ABCs Coloring Pages
To download the image for coloring, click on the image, save it to your PC and print! Images are already sized for 8.5″x11″ paper.
Print, color, and send a postcard to someone you know!
Print and send a gratitude postcard to someone you know protecting Lake Wingra.
FAQ
Do I need to do anything special for printing?
No. All images or PDFs should be sized for normal 8.5″x11″ paper. Also, you can choose to print in color or black and white.
Do you have any hard copies of these activities?
We only have laminated bingo cards at this time. We typically use them at outreach events, but can consider loaning them on a case by case basis. Reach out if this interests you!
How do I play the bingo game?
An easy way to reuse the call list is to print it out. Then, cut out the different words/descriptions and put them in a jar. Pick from the jar for each turn. Reuse for future games.
Can I request new activities?
Definitely! We can’t promise we’ll be able to create them. However, we love to hear new ideas and will do our best.
A little help from our friends!
We want to recognize and give a huge thank you to our Spring 2021 Badger Volunteers for helping enhance our Wingra ABCs content! Volunteers truly make the work we do possible. With their help we expanded activities beyond the original Wingra ABCs bingo and e-book. Get to know the people behind the magic.
Katie Hayes – My name is Katie Hayes and I am a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am studying Retailing and Consumer Behavior with a focus and certificate in Sustainability. I had so much fun creating coloring pages and postcards during my time spent with the youth education team. I hope you are enjoying them!
Alexus Kapkeo – Hi, I’m Alexus Kapkeo. I’m a student at UW-Madison who is double majoring in Human Geography and Environmental Studies with a certificate in Asian American Studies. Some of my favorite outdoor hobbies include bird watching around Lake Monona and walking around the Lakeshore Nature Preserve with friends.
Aidan Perrault
Shirene Singh – I am a senior majoring in chemical engineering at UW-Madison. I really enjoyed being a part of the Youth Education team – Friends of Lake Wingra, in the Spring’21 semester. As a Badger Volunteer, I got the opportunity to create fun resources, such as a scavenger hunt and alphabet practice worksheets, for school kids. I think through this experience I was able to learn a lot about the Wingra Watershed and the Wingra ABCs.