A geography project about rivers for kindergarten students can be as simple as helping them make posters of a scene that contains a river. As they make the posters, you can talk about the different scientific aspects that make up rivers, such as the role gravity plays in the flow of a river, and help them label the main features of rivers on the poster. You can then display these posters in the classroom or in the hall outside the classroom.
Children in elementary grades may enjoy making their own three-dimensional topography maps of a river system with its tributaries and surrounding terrain. Mix one part flour with one part water to create a bonding agent, then mix it with crumpled up strips of newspaper to model the river region. Use uncrumpled strips of newspaper to smooth the outer surface. After the model dries, your students can use poster paint to decorate it.
Older kids can organize or at least participate in a river cleanup. The official National River Cleanup program has been facilitating this type of work since 1991, according to American Rivers, with hundreds of rivers cleaned and millions of pounds of trash removed. This is an informative field trip if a river is not too far away, because the cleanup process puts the students in direct touch with every element of a river and its environment. If you have no major rivers in your area, a smaller stream or creek can also work well.
Another idea for geography class projects about rivers is to have students use a particular river as the setting or inspiration for a creative writing project, such as a poem, a song or a short story. Depending on the difficulty of the writing project, this can work well for students from kindergarten through high school. You can assign your students a specific well-known river, such as the Amazon or the Mississippi, or you can have them choose a smaller river local to your area. You can make it a game to see who can include the most towns that the selected river passes through.