Classroom Close-Up
“We had two pig puppets that the kids really liked—Violet and Rayshawn. During Circle Time, I told the kids that Violet and Rayshawn have each built a house in a far corner of our huge outdoor sandbox, and they have asked for our help. They have no water in their houses, and they are thirsty. ‘What can we do?’ I asked the class. Together, we brainstormed how to get water to their houses. Finally we came up with a solution—to build two rivers that started at the near end of the sandbox and flowed to the two far corners.
The kids were really excited. They spent lots of time digging the riverbeds. The group project created high energy. Kids were constantly telling each other, ‘Come on, guys, let’s get to work!’ From time to time I would gently turn on the hose and test how the riverbeds were working. One of the things the kids were learning was that if they dug the riverbed too deep, the water wouldn’t flow. Instead, the pathway would just fill up with water and spill over. Then the sand would collapse and block the water from going through. So, we had these discussions and kids came up with a new vocabulary for this. ‘Damage,’ they called it. So we talked a lot about how we could stop the damage to make the river flow. I recorded their ideas and used pictures and their words to document the challenges so we could keep track and talk about them.
To see how fast we could move the water down the two paths, we had water races. When kids were ready to move the water, we counted out loud to track how fast the water moved.
The kids are getting better at their river-building. They’re creating better waterways without ‘damage’ and heading off problems early on. At first, they would dig really fast and say, ‘OK, we’re ready.’ And then they’d end up spending a lot of time doing repairs. But now they spend more time up front. They’ll say, ‘We’re not ready yet. We still have to work on this curve right here.’ They’re learning what problems may come up and how to avoid them. And I’m learning with them.”
—Oren, preschool teacher
“I put containers of different shapes and sizes in the water table. Kids loved just pouring water back and forth from one container to another. Over the next week, I gradually introduced different kinds of materials. I put out some water pumps that I picked up in the toy store and a sump pump from a boating supply store. It took a while for kids to figure out how to work the pumps, but once they did, the pumps were a big attraction. The kids loved how they could use the sump pumps to splash water out—the big exciting stuff. They called it ‘fireworks.’ One day, I put clear plastic tubing from a hardware store in the water table. The kids loved it because they could watch the water move through the tubing.
Some of the kids were really into figuring out how to use the materials to move water from one place to another. But other kids, especially the younger ones, weren’t so interested in this. They wanted to just feel the water on their hands or give their doll a bath. I wasn’t sure how to deal with this. But then my supervisor suggested that I set up two water centers—one for exploring how water moves, the other for washing dolls. Being clear about the goal of each center solved a lot of problems!”
—Oren, preschool teacher