Portable Water Play

Water play is usually a big hit around here, with bath time being a favourite. Last year I actually brought the water table from the backyard in our kitchen for the winter so that the kids could still have water play. It was cumbersome and got in the way. This year I decided to try something different.

We have a small wooden Ikea children's table. I placed a very large, clear plastic storage bin on top to create a portable water table. The bin is just the right size to hold enough water to sustain lots of creative, exploratory play, and I love that it's clear so the water and materials can be seen from the side. This would be a great solution for anyone wanting to encourage their children to engage in water play but do not have or want to spend the money on large wooden water/sand tables.

I love adding colour to water play by using food colouring. It adds another dimension to the sensory play, and it's great for mini lessons on colour mixing. Caleb decided he wanted to make green water, so I encouraged him to add yellow food colouring to the water.

He then added some blue food colouring...

...and was amazed as he mixed the colours and they turned green!

Although I have brought in some of our outdoor water table toys, I added in every day tools from around the house like spoons, cups, and funnels. This was a great way to introduce new vocabulary by naming the tools (e.g., graduated cylinder, funnel) and engaging in a discussion about how they might be used.

Red Sand on the Light Table

We purchased some very neat decorative red sand and put it on the light table this week. It was beautiful!

The children were very eager to explore it, using their hands and fingers to swirl and shape the sand into letters and designs.

The light from the light table illuminated their drawings and printings.

Here's a beautiful spring butterfly!

Lots of printing practice too!

Exploring Shadows

We enjoyed some of the rare moments of sun by heading outside to try and find shadows. The children discovered themselves on the pavement and we encouraged them to try and trace each other's shadow.  

As they worked, we engaged them in conversations about how they thought shadows were made.

"It's when the sun evaporates," explained one of our children. "It's like water when the sun comes out. It disappears. Shadows are when the sun disappears."  What an interesting hypothesis! 

Marker Experiment

What happens when you put markers in cups of water? We asked our children what they thought and then experimented with markers and water on our light table.

The children were fascinated by what they observed - the water turned the colour of the marker almost immediately!

Wanting to extend this activity and encourage children to engage in a writing experience, we put out white paper and white crayons and encouraged the children to write 'secret messages' to one another. Children wrote on their papers with the crayon...

And used the coloured water to decode the secret message!

What fun!

Goop!

Mrs. Bombardier put out one of our favourite messy activities...GOOP!  Goop is cornstarch and water mixed together with some food colouring. Just enough water is added to the cornstarch so that it is wet and will drip through one's fingers when picked up, but dry enough so it is hard to the touch when in the sensory bin. It is messy and so much fun!

Goop is interesting because it acts like both a solid and liquid - this intrigued our children especially after our experiments with melting crayons earlier in the week. We added tools like funnels, spoons, and bowls to the goop to enhance the exploration.

Eensy Weensy Spider Retell

The amazing thing about inquiry-based, child-centred learning is that you never know what you might discover along with the children! We've been reading "The Eensy Weensy Spider" big book during our shared reading time. A copy of it will be sent home in your child's blue duotang.

The children were very interested in learning what a water spout was. After much discussion, we agreed that it would be interesting to set up our water table so that we had some water spouts for our spiders to slide down. The children were instrumental in helping to plan and create this! We attached long meter sticks to each corner of the table and the children helped to wind large tubes down and around them. We attached a recycled pop bottle top to the top to act as a funnel.

The children explored how to wash the spider down the spout. It was an interesting measurement opportunity because the children realized that our large spiders either did not fit into the tube, or got stuck half-way through. They searched around the room for spiders that were small enough to work.

 The children created a game where one child would put the spider at the top of the tube and another had to catch it. And it all started with a big book and hopes for a retell adventure...

Adding Levels to the Tactile Play Table

One of our families donated some large boxes to the classroom.  We decided to add different layers to the tactile table for the children to explore. We cut out 'windows' for the children to put their hands and faces into, hoping that this would enhance their play and exploration. We taped the boxes together and to the table in interesting ways.

Adding a tube for a chute into the lower box attracted much interest to the center.

The other side of the table had two levels of boxes to play in.

A word of warning to anyone interested in replicating this in their classroom. The tape needs to be extremely strong - our boxes only lasted one play time.