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, June 22, 2019

Meaningful choices

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As of late, my go-to book for thinking about early childhood education is The Informed Vision , by David Hawkins. In his book, Hawkins often...

Saturday, June 8, 2019

Big box and cardboard tube with opposing inclines

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For 28 years, I built apparatus that fit in and around the sand and water table . Children arrived in my classroom already with a set of co...

Saturday, June 1, 2019

Intentionality and spontaneity

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I have been thinking a lot about intentionality and spontaneity and where they fit in an early childhood classroom. Intentionality seems to...

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Saturday, May 11, 2019

Honoring their operations

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Children's operations might look simple but are really quite complex. Take for instance the operations of filling, pouring and transpor...

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Children's approaches to experiences

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Let me begin with a quote from David Hawkins. On page 139 of his book The Informed Vision , he states: "Because children differ in con...

Saturday, April 13, 2019

A pink plastic cup

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On a shelf next to the sand and water table I had what I called a set of hodgepodge and doohickies . Basically they were an assortment of ma...

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Saturday, April 6, 2019

Making tools

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In his book The Informed Vision, David Hawkins uses the phrase "Messing About" as one of the phases of school work in science. He...

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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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