Tag Archives: #investigating

Let’s explore Science through water play!

British Science Week is a 10 day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths, otherwise known as STEM. The children in Cart Mill have been exploring many aspects of science through their water play.

30th Anniversary: British Science Week 2024! | All About STEMAll About STEM

Children can learn lots about maths and measurement through water play. We have explored this by adding a variety of containers to our water tray to allow the children to observe which container fills up the fastest and which shape and size holds the most water. This also allows children to use vocabulary related to measurement such as full, empty and some.

Some of the children helped with a colour mixing experiment in the water tray. J decided that he wanted to choose blue and orange and selected them from the art trolley himself. The children used their hands and utensils such as wooden spoons to see what happens when the two colours mixed together. They discovered that it turned a yucky colour!

‘’that’s like mud outside’’

‘’it’s the same colour as clay’’

       

The children also discovered, that by mixing the paint into the water, they created bubbles!

‘’Look at that one, it’s so big!’’

‘’I want to pop it’’.

The children were able to watch the bubbles form in front of their eyes knowing that they were creating them by mixing the water together with soap. Bubble experiments endorses scientific thinking through observation and exploration.

 

The children suggested that maybe next time we put some items into the water tray to see if they ‘’go under’’ or ‘’stay at the top’’ so next time, we will be exploring sinking and floating. I wonder what objects the children will choose…

Article 31: I have the right to play

Article 29: I have the right to an education which develops my personality.

Let’s get creative 🛠

Today at the tinker table the children have been super busy, we have had so much fun creating using the tools, loose parts and blocks of wood.

To begin with the children were investigating and experimenting with the different tools to see which would work best.

“I’m going to need the saw and hammer.”

After choosing all the resources needed we then got started!

First the children wanted to measure out their fabric, so we used our measuring tapes.

“I’ll draw a line to help measure.”
“I’m going up to number 4.”

The children then carefully hammered the nails into the blocks of wood, joining the pieces together.


“I use the hammer with my dad to fix things in the house”

Next the children used the saw to cut the wood into smaller pieces and carefully sanded down the sharp edges, using our sandpaper tool that the children previously made themselves.


“It’s sharp we need to make it soft.”

”You need to saw very carefully, like this.”

Here is the children’s fantastic pieces of work! Great job everyone 👍🏻

“My giraffe has a very long neck, his name is Max.”

”My airplane goes all the way into the sky.”

”I have made a cheetah.”

The children demonstrated brilliant independence skills as they made their own choices and decisions. The children were encouraged to use the majority of the tools and resources independently while being supervised.

Little Investigators ⚒️

Today at the tinker table we have been very busy learning a new skill, deconstructing! We have been learning to use our tools to join things together, now we will be learning how to use our tools to take things apart!

 We started by looking in our playrooms for items that we could take apart. We decided that if we broke down the appliances into parts, we could then investigate each component and discover how they work and were assembled together.

The children found a selection of items that we then took over to our tinker table to investigate.

“I wonder what is inside of this one?”

“What else can we find”

Once at the tinker table we had a discussion on what tools we thought would be best to use to open up our appliances.

“I think the screwdriver”

We chose to deconstruct the keyboard first. Once opened we discovered that the soft plastic inside is what makes the keys move.

“This has lots of screws”

“There’s so many buttons on this”

“It’s all squishy inside”

We then opened up a computer mouse to see what was inside.

“It has a wheel”

“It goes click click”

We had so much fun today learning a new skill. The  children explored how each of the appliances were assembled and learned about how the different elements all interact. We also discussed with each other the purpose of each component.

We are excited to explore what else we can find to deconstruct at our tinker table next!