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.
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.
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