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, July 29, 2017

Boxes in boxes first edition

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While I was looking over pictures I took when I first started building things for the sensory table, I found some that depict the first edit...

Saturday, July 22, 2017

Tube through wardrobe box on an incline

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In the spring of 2013, I wrote a piece about an apparatus made from a wardrobe box. Moving companies have them for boxing up closets withou...

Saturday, July 15, 2017

Trays in a box

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I like big boxes and I like trays. A few years ago, I decided to combine a big box with some trays. What I got was a crazy looking contrap...

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Saturday, July 8, 2017

Flex tube in a bucket

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Here is an oldie but goodie. I built the flex tube in a bucket over 20 years ago by taping an aluminum tube into a five-gallon bucket. ...

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Playing in the rain

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We watch our grandchildren a few times each month. Over the last month, we have watched them twice while it was raining. The first time it...

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Saturday, June 24, 2017

More thinking

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Last week I wrote that the sensory table is a rich space for thinking for both me and the children. I used examples of my thinking and chi...

Saturday, June 17, 2017

A rich space for thinking

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In 2014, I built an apparatus I called the Box Peak . I removed one side of a big narrow box and set it up over the sensory table in such ...

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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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