Woman reunites with message in a bottle she released 26 years prior after it ended up her daughter's class

A woman has reunited with a message in a bottle that she released in a lake 26 years ago - after it ended up in the hands of her own daughter's teacher.

As part of a fourth grade class assignment, Ontario-native Makenzie Van Eyk wrote a letter about the water cycle, put it in a glass bottle, and chucked it into Lake Saint Clair.

She never thought about it again - until 26 years later, when her daughter came home and told her that it had miraculously ended up in her classroom.

The bottle was found by a young boy named River Vandenberg, who was playing at Lake Saint Clair with his grandmother Michele Vandenberg and noticed it.

In the letter, Makenzie had included the name of her school - St. John the Baptist, where River was also a student - so after Michele and River read it, they decided to bring it there so they could try to reunite it with the writer.

'There was no date on the letter, so I thought maybe [it was from] this year or last year at most,' Michele told CBC recently.

'We sent it to school, then [River's] teacher contacted us that day and said it was from 1998. I was shocked.'

One teacher at the school thought it was interesting and decided to read the note aloud to their class, and in the coincidentally, Makenzie's own daughter, Scarlet, was in the class.

'My mouth completely dropped,' the youngster recalled to the publication of realizing it was written by her mom. 'Everyone was like, "Who's that? Who's that?" And I was like, "My mother."'

Scarlet took it home and showed Makenzie, who was equally as shocked.

'I definitely wasn't thinking about it often, so I was very surprised,' she said.

'I remember writing it. [The teacher] had us seal the bottles in wax, and that process really stuck with me.

'It was right when our school got its first computer lab so it was one of the first things I ever printed on paper. That was pretty cool.'

The letter reads, 'I learned at school that water has to go through water cycles to get the bad stuff out of it like germs and lots of other things.

'The water has been here since God created the world. Isn't it funny to think you might be drinking the same water Jesus did?'

The outlet reported that it was found 'almost exactly where Makenzie threw it in.'

'It didn't travel very far. Maybe it got stuck in reeds,' she concluded.