Weeds — not something to ordinarily get excited about. But as the sun broke Thursday afternoon, May 17, children armed with gloves and orange bags were happy to help pull dyer's woad plants in City Creek Canyon to help control its invasion of the canyon.

Leaders and 11 children cleaned the yellow-blossomed weed off a patch of land in minutes and moved on to the next, service that was part of the H2O Adventures, a series of classes and activities that combined Salt Lake City's YouthCity after-school children with Vanessa Welsh of the Salt Lake Department of Public Utilities.

Welsh, a watershed specialist for the department, met with the children of YouthCity's Ottinger Hall site for a six-week session of lessons and activities about water and the environment.

"I knew they were after-school kids, and they weren't going to want to sit in a classroom-like setting."

So, Welsh said, she took the children on hikes, had them catch and examine water bugs and examine them with microscopes, helped them record data and took them on a tour of the City Creek water treatment plant.

"I wanted it to be fun, but I wanted it to be science-based. I wanted this to show that science can be fun and that you can go to school and get a real job doing science that's fun," Welsh said.

Dallas Russell, coordinator of the Ottinger Hall site, said projects like this broaden children's experience.

"They have a pretty small world right now, so after school we try to expose them to different opportunities," Russell said. "We're trying to expose them to as many things as possible." This, she said, includes a range of topics, such as cooking, art and the environment.

The after-school program holds multiple six- to eight-week sessions during the fall, winter and two summer sessions.

YouthCity, a program run by Salt Lake City, has centers spread throughout the city where groups of children meet after school and during the summer. The program uses a structured curriculum that Janet Wolf, director of YouthCity, said was designed to explore things not covered during the school day. Doing so, she said, supplements and augments what they learn during school.

Steve Alder, a YouthCity staff member who has been with the group of children for a year, said the children loved the H2O Adventures session and learned to appreciate more the effort providing water takes.

"They understand that it takes people and a lot of work and engineering just to get water to come out of the tap and the shower."

Alder said YouthCity is lucky to have funding other after-school programs do not have. The program receives funds from multiple government and private sources. Alder said it gives them access to resources that they would otherwise not have.

RaNae, one of the children attending the program, said she liked "just helping out." She said she liked helping improve the environment and realizing that people are part of it. She said she is going to share what learned in the future.

James, another of the program's attendees, said he liked pulling the weeds to help the animal life. He said he learned about water pollution and also what bugs to be careful around.

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E-mail: bcaballero@desnews.com