Learning with Water

It is warming up here and the children are loving the two new water vessels we bought in the holidays. We are going through a lot of spare clothes at the moment with some children having to change their whole outfit completely but the parents are happy, the children are well supervised and learning many valuable things. I like to have water both inside and outside the classroom and use it to teach and reinforce many concepts.

Here are some of the ways water can be used throughout the curriculum.....

Science - floating and sinking

I put out two baskets with pictures showing items floating and sinking. The children are encouraged to test each item one at a time after guessing what will happen. They then they put the item in the corresponding basket. The results can then be counted and discussed.

Literacy - learning letters and our names

I wrote the childrens names and the letters of the alphabet on shells and put them in a fish bowl for the children to catch and identify. I added some green colouring to the water and some pebbles to make the activity a little more challenging.

Maths - counting

The children loved this activity. I put table tennis balls in the water trolley and added some spoons and a bowl. The children tried to pick up a ball with a spoon and transfer it to the bowl without dropping it. We then counted each ball we could get into the bowl.

Outdoor - water play

We change the contents of the water trolley each week to reinforce the topic we are talking about.

One water trolley is a natural looking pond that this week has had pebbles in it. The children added wood chips and we're pretending it was a giant bowl of soup!

Our other water vessel had pouring containers, funnels and tubes today which was a lot of fun.