My name is
Kathy Cholette and I am one of Interns placed here on Wednesdays this semester
in your child’s class. One of my many responsibilities is to interact and work
in groups by providing children opportunities to enhance their knowledge in
many areas of learning. After watching children explore the sand table I
wondered if children could explore water movement in the same manner. I have
planned my group times allowing children to explore water and enhance their
thinking about how water flows. We began our investigation by using colored
tubes and water. After watching and
listening to the children I learned they already had some concept on water
movement.
Some of the children’s “Big Ideas”
were that they needed bigger tubes, “maybe if we had bigger tubes we could see
the water inside”. Would larger tubes answer our big question? The children were able to get more water in
them, but they still were not able to see the water inside the tubes. I needed
to provide a visual to the children to enhance what they already knew about
water, but how? I discussed many options with the children and they decided
that maybe clear tubes would support this goal. In order to do this we dyed the
water red and used clear tubing and funnels to explore with. The children were able to see the colored
water go into the tubes and watch as it came down. The visual effect was now
provided for but did they learn something new? It was even more apparent that
all we did was create a different mean for the same result. In the end after exploring the children were
able to confirm that water flows down.
The children were excited to learn
about how water flows and moves during this process. In the weeks to come I
want to create ways for children to learn that water flow and movement does
move up. In order for the children to learn this I will be providing some hands
on activities through capillary exploring, a physical process by which a liquid
spreads or shrinks when it comes in contact with a particular solid
surface. Some of the materials will be
coffee filters, flowers and celery. I
hope to teach that water flow and movement can go in many directions.
