Big box inside the table

I always joke that you can pretty much guess what I just bought by looking at the apparatus in the sensory table.  However, that it is not a joke.  Here is a case in point that I have never written about.  Eleven years ago, I bought a big plastic deck box.   After putting together the plastic deck box, I brought its empty cardboard box into school to see what I could make for the sensory table.  As it turned out, the box fit into the table lengthwise.

The big deck box slid into the table to a depth of about 4 inches.  To give the deck box stability, I embedded it in a another plain cardboard box that spanned the width of the table.  I set it in the middle of this second box so there would be equal access to the table on both sides.   There ended up to be space underneath the white box almost like it was floating a couple of inches off the bottom of the table.

By embedding the white box in the other cardboard box, I created some intriguing spaces that were narrow and deep on both sides of the white box.  The apparatus ended up looking like it had wings on each side of the white box.  Children poured corn into the top openings and they accessed the corn at the bottom of the table through the large window cut in the brown box.  Because I cut a similar window hole in the white box directly across from the window hole in the brown box, children also accessed the corn that accumulated at the bottom of the white box. 

As the children accessed the corn in the bottom of the white box, they found a hole in the bottom of the white box that emptied into the bottom of the table.  If a child wanted to, she could stretch through three holes and three segmented spaces to scoop the corn from the bottom of the table.  I would think that would qualify as a wonderful exercise in spatial literacy.

So all the corn would not accumulate in the confines of the brown box, I needed to cut a hole in the brown box at the bottom as an outlet for the corn.  

I cut a lot of big windows in this apparatus.  Whether the children were on the sides or the ends of the apparatus, there were clear sight lines through the apparatus giving them different perspectives.  Not only did they encounter different perspectives through the holes, they also gained some fundamental experiences with depth perception.

After a week, I added cardboard tubes set on an incline on each side of the apparatus.  The tubes emptied into a storage bin at the end of the table.

I also cut out "windows" in the tubes so the children could catch a glimpse of the corn sliding down the tube.

I thought I had created a lot of intriguing spaces that the children accessed through all the different windows.   To tell you the truth, I did not even count the space on top of the apparatus.  Even though I did not count it, the children did.  Below, they used the top of the white box as a shelf to hold all their full containers.

When I look at this last picture, I can't help but think that the children did an admirable job of using the space on top of the white box so all their full containers fit, even the spoons which are laid across a couple of the holes on top.   Now that is some good math.