EASTON, MARYLAND — The Maryland Department of Agriculture said Sept. 9 that elementary and middle school teachers can use a free multimedia science set built with Maryland Public Television to teach the water cycle, the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and why restoring and conserving natural resources matters.

The collection is called Welcome to Your Watershed. MDA said it is designed for grades 3–5 and grades 6–8. Students explore how water moves around the planet, what shapes that movement, and how activity across a watershed reaches the Chesapeake Bay.

Teachers get more than student screens. MDA said the package includes supplemental enrichment activities on farming and watershed conservation, plus a detailed Teacher’s Guide for each lesson aligned to national and state standards so the pieces can drop into existing curriculum maps.

The set is free on Maryland Public Television’s Thinkport watershed site. Thinkport’s watershed page describes the Chesapeake Bay watershed as spanning about 64,000 square miles across parts of six states and the District of Columbia, with more than 18 million residents — and points educators to classroom resources, an interactive, and a quiz produced by MPT/Thinkport in partnership with MDA, with funding support noted from a Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund grant.

For Shore classrooms already talking about creeks that feed the Bay, the MDA release frames the package as an environmental-science tool for the 2026-27 school year. Local systems decide how or whether to assign it.

MDA’s communications director for the release is Rachel Felver at 667-493-8683.