SAND AND WATER TABLES

This is a blog for early childhood teachers looking for ways to expand and enrich play and learning in and around their sand and water tables with easy-to-make, low-cost apparatus. It may also be of interest for anyone who appreciates children's messy play.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Rocking chair car ramp

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For a couple of years, pieces of a bentwood rocking chair had been sitting in my basement waiting to be repaired. Here is a picture of a be...

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Saturday, August 20, 2016

Worm slide and social connections

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Every year since I bought a "bucket of worms" on sale at a sporting goods store, I have set up a worm slide. Each year it looked ...

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Monday, August 15, 2016

The act of building

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I have never documented the entire building process for an apparatus. Part of the reason may be that the building process for me is an orga...

Sunday, August 7, 2016

The art of scientific inquiry

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Last week I wrote about new additions to the channel board apparatus. I added a gutter sponge, a piece of tree bark and a tube connected t...

Saturday, July 30, 2016

Channel board plus

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I rarely bring out the same apparatus twice in one year. However, I did this year. In June, I wrote about a new addition to the channel b...

Saturday, July 23, 2016

More water

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This year, the water pump was set up so the children could send water across and over the blue table into the clear table through pipes con...

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Hand pump II

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For many years, I wanted to set up a water pump inside. Last year for the first time I finally set up a hand pump in the sensory table. ...

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About Me

Tom Bedard: Early childhood education has been my life for over 40 years. I have taught all age groups from infants to 5-year-olds. I was a director for five years in the 1980s, but I returned to the classroom 22 years ago. My passion is watching the ways children explore and discover their world. In the classroom, everything starts with the reciprocal relationships between adults and children and between the children themselves. With that in mind, I plan and set up activities. But that is just the beginning. What actually happens is a flow that includes my efforts to invite, respond and support children's interface with those activities and with others in the room. Oh yeh, and along the way, the children change the activities to suit their own inventiveness and creativity. Now the processes become reciprocal with the children doing the inviting, responding and supporting. Young children are the best learners and teachers. I am truly fortunate to be a part of their journey.

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