Water Pipes

A week ago I shared this apparatus for the first time.

This week I took out the thistle seeds and added water.

Day one and it was filled with clear water.

Day 2 I decided to add colour to the water

and continued to change it to a new colour each day.

The colour made it quite visual for the children to see what was happening.

Which I found seemed to help the children use the basters easier.

Since they could see water being sucked in

and squirted out.

Also with coloured water they could see it in the tub

versus clear water offered just a view of the towels below.

A few other observations...

She is experimenting with the baster

and realized that she could make bubbles in it

if she put her finger as a plug in the opening.

Open then cover would make a little bubble move up inside.

These two realized they could use a baster as a plug

then fill the funnel before pulling the plug.

The boy was counting how many cups it took

to fill the funnel.

Finally this toddler is learning that he can move the whole

apparatus and get adults attention.

How Does a Baster Work?

Turkey basters - how do they work?

 We've used eye droppers a lot at the art table

and it's a challenge for most of the children.

This week I put turkey basters in the water table expecting them to be a challenge too.

I was impressed how much easier they seemed to be able to work the basters

compared to eye droppers.

Is it because they are that much bigger and they can use their whole hand?

 

The parents were wonderful modeling how the baster works and sitting back and letting their child try over and over again.

Here's a photo study of concentration.

After a week of using the baster we will use eye droppers again soon.

Monday at the Pond

Our focus this week, at the pond, was water.

Some of the questions the children thought of last week were;

What is in the water?

What happens to the water?

Why is grass in the water?

With those questions in mind we started to explore.

The first thing we did was check the water level.

We measured with our feet how far from last weeks sticks, that we laid,

to this week's sticks, that we just put down.

When asked what happen to the water one boy responded 'it evaporated'.

Then we grabbed our equipment.

Nets, magnifying glasses and containers.

 Nets in the water and they quickly found the first bug.

I brought a library book for reference.

 Next we found a really squiggly insect.

 
                                 

A worm was found but the child was quite confidant that it was dead.

But she put it on dry land just in case.

And we continued exploring.

 

 Then one of the parents spotted a clump attached to a blade of grass.

We took a closer look and almost tumbled in.

 But we scooped out the jelly blob and put it in a container.

We think they are salamander eggs.

To finish off the morning we drew our observations.

 

This morning we were able to answer all three questions

from last week and came up with a few more.

Next week we'll focus on bugs.