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.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Joy

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Whenever I do workshops on constructing apparatus for the sensory table, I tell participants that one of the defining characteristics of pla...

Sunday, November 17, 2019

The thing about sharing

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Sharing is a good thing, right? Don't we want a world in which children and adults share, especially when we are talking about finite r...

Saturday, August 31, 2019

The science of sloshing and the moon landing

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I am always looking for real-life analogues for children's scientific inquiry at the sensory table. In looking over my documentation la...

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Thursday, August 29, 2019

The extraordinary in the ordinary

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There are some things that happen in an early childhood classroom that are quite extraordinary but at the same quite ordinary. Does the...

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Monday, August 26, 2019

Australia bound

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Next week I, will travel to Australia through Real World Learning , a group that specializes in STEM professional development. I will be do...

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Horizontal tube with holes

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In 2013 I built an apparatus that I called: horizontal tube with holes. I placed a long cardboard tube lengthwise across two sensory tables...

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Unique loose parts

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In my last post, I wrote about children making meaningful choices around an apparatus I called the vertical tube and rope apparatus. Whe...

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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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