COMBINING APPARATUS

First of all, I want to thank all those who attended my presentation on sensory tables at the NAEYC annual conference in Atlanta last weekend. There has been an noticeable uptick in the number of hits to this blog, so I want to thank you.  If you ever have any questions or comments, I invite you to either comment on the post or send me an email.  

After the Tubes and Funnels apparatus and after the Channel Board apparatus, I decided to combine the two apparatus into one big apparatus.

With this new combination, children still have to figure out where the water goes when they pour it in one of the funnels.  If you look at the channel board, you can see that two of the tubes empty onto the channel board.  That is trickier that it may seem because for water to flow out of the two tubes, the water first has to flow down and then back up before it can flow out of these long tubes.

What that means for the children operating on the combined apparatus is that the water does not flow out of the tubes with much force.  You can see the anemic flow of water out of the sprinkler head in the picture below.

So how do children figure out which funnels empty out of which tubes?  They investigate.  That is illustrated nicely in the video below.  Watch as the boy first pours water into the black funnel.  He looks through the crate to see where the water goes.  He figures out pretty quickly that the funnel is connected to the black tube.  He then follows the tube down and then up.  He declares: "It went in here."  He follows the tube to the end and then uses his hand to trace the tube's path from crate to the board.  He asks: "Oh, what is this?"  I am not sure why he asks the question because he seems to know that the water flows through the tube.  Maybe he is just saying what he is thinking because he then states: "It [the water] went down this one." He again scoops up some water to pour in the funnels.  He starts with one funnel and actually looks at the channel board to see where the water will go.  After referencing the channel board, he decides to pour the water into the funnel in front of the black funnel.  He immediately turns and sees that the water come out of the sprinkler head.  He chuckles and says that it is funny.   Watch him figure out the apparatus.

Where does the water go? from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

When the children begin to figure out how the apparatus works, they come up with their own operations.  Watch as this girl demonstrates how to make water come out of both tubes at the same time.  She has figured out that if she pours water into two particular funnels at the same time, the water comes out onto the channel board at the same time.  Watch.

I made them come out at the same time! from Thomas Bedard on Vimeo.

I think her little chuckle indicates the sense of agency she has in having figured this operation out.

I kept the loose parts from the previous post.  That led to a whole host of other operations and experimentation.  I was especially struck by two three-year-olds that figured out how to propel little orange bottles down the clear tube by first setting the bottle in the tube and then pouring water down the tube.  Watch.




What is so striking about this video is that they have figured out how water carries objects down a incline.  They did this on their own.  Not only that, they take turns effortlessly and with social grace.  That is a nice melding of science and social learning.