Week One Water Activities

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Week One Water Activities
During the first week, as Mary and Jane began predicting the direction of the long-term study, they focused on moving water.

Figure: Teacher notes that read, "Activity: Channeling Water I. Materials: Large playground blocks, water channel modules, hose, wading pools and large tubs, ping pong balls and small cards, buckets, cups, and watering cans. Initial Setup: Two stacks of blocks, one higher than the other, with one water channel module bridging the two stacks, set up hose at tope so that water is flowing downhill, have other blocks and channeling modules nearby for later. Put wading pool at bottom of water channel to capture water. Introduction: Ask children what will happen when they put balls or cars on the top of the channel with the water running downhill. Advise them when pool at bottom is full, the hose will be turned off and no more water can be added. Exploration and Scaffolding: Facilitate/supervise free play with structure until pool is full. Ask them how they will get water back up to the top so play can continue. Encourage adaptation, addition of additional blocks, channeling modules, and water capture tubs/pools to make more complicated structures with additional water. Prediction: Children will make use of buckets, cups, etc. to take water out of pool(s) and pour back in at top to keep play going. Channeling Water II. Materials: Same as Activity I, small whiteboards and markers. Initial Setup: hook up tubing and pump to existing structure. Intervention: Demonstrate operation of pump to circulate water from bottom pool back to top of structure. Exploration and Scaffolding: Experiment with different ways to add blocks/channels to structure and observe how water moved with assistance of pump. Encourage children to use whiteboards to draw plans for water circulating structures/systems. Use additional blocks/water channeling modules to replicate plans. Prediction: Children will begin to experiment with changing elevations, degree of incline for water channels, etc. Water Table. Materials: Spray bottles, tubing, funnels, ping pong balls. Initial Setup: Set up water table. Intervention: None. See what happens.

Document what happens Mary and Jane review their notes and the drawings done by the children.

Figure 6.11: Designing a Water-Moving System
The challenge of designing water-moving systems was difficult, but the children were very invested in this part of the initial activities and every design presented was subsequently built and tested.

Figure: Children's illustration of water-moving systems. There are two pools for the water at either end of the pipes. The pipes run from one pool, make a circle and empty into the second pool.

Among their observations, they note that:

  • The children are highly motivated to get water to move uphill but realize that without the pump, no matter how they adjust the block/channeling structure, it wont happen.
  • They are very interested in trying to manipulate the water channels to increase the speed of the moving water so that their balls and cars will go faster; they become focused on making steeper inclines but realize that the strength/power of the pump is limited and that, at some point, it wont work. They ask if there is a way to make the pump have more power.
  • Some children become highly engaged with dumping water out of the pools and onto the ground as they notice that the water spilling out of the pools runs downhill across the playground, moving the wood mulch ground cover and creating erosion channels that go in different directions. They experiment with Ping-Pong balls to see how they can make them move through the mud.
  • Some children express increased interest in the rain-barrel system as they observe the plumbing and realize that somehow water inside the barrels must be moving up and down without the aid of a pump.
  • Children working in the water table figure out that the spray bottles operate on the same principle as the water pump, and they begin taking them to different places on the playground to experiment with their ability to move leaves, wood mulch, rocks, sticks, etc. They ask if they can take them apart to see if they can figure out where their power comes from.

Organize and reflect on documentation After several days of water activities, in their subsequent discussions with the children, the KWL chart was revised to add:

K: Spray bottles are pumps (but we dont know why they work); some water can go up without a pump; we can make water go faster if we make it steeper; water can move dirt to make little rivers; some of our designs worked really good, but others not at all; does the water in the sink and bathtub have a pump?

W: How does a pump work? How can water go up without a pump? Do rivers only go downhill? What happens to the water in the rain barrels if they get full?

L: We need to ask the engineer to come over and explain how the rain barrels work; we can look on the Internet to find out more about pumps; maybe the engineer can tell us about pumps, too.

Adjust future planning to adapt to the direction of the inquiry To proceed with the inquiry, Mary and Jane decided to focus on three things based on the interests represented in the childrens observations and questions: (1) how the water harvesting system works, (2) how pumps work, and (3) how vertical drop affects the descent speed of objects. Their next stage of planning included:

  • Consulting with the environmental science graduate students who installed the rain-barrel water collection system. The students suggest painting a mural on the wall behind the rain barrels to diagram how the system works and collaborating with the children on a book about water harvesting.
  • Identifying resources providing information about how pumps work. They printed off images and diagrams of different kinds of simple pumps to add to the classroom library and share in group discussions.
  • Bringing in the bicycle pump that they use to blow up playground balls and let the children use it.
  • Bringing in several different common items with simple hand-pumping (nonpressurized for safety purposes) mechanisms including toothpaste, hand lotion, insect repellent, sunscreen, and a variety of squirt guns, including a supersoaker.
  • Adding flexible plastic track to the block center that the children can build elevated systems for their small cars.
  • Adding wood panels on the playground to be used with the large interlocking playground blocks for constructing larger ramps.
  • Continuing with waterfall exploration by building a water wall, providing recycled bottles and funnels, tubing, and a flexible dryer duct that the children could attach in different ways to a wood panel to channel water.
  • Encouraging children to use paper and markers to make large diagrams of the systems they are constructing to show how they work.

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