Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Exploring the Motion of Water- Week of February 18th, 2013



Building off of last week’s investigation we again experimented with ways to move water.  Rather than using our hands we used air and created waves.  While doing our investigation the first week the children talked about splashing and making waves.  This week we focused more on moving the water intentionally, rather than just splashing.  On our first day of investigation we used straws and blew air on to the water.  At first, the children tried using the straws to splash and move the water but Ms. Camardese demonstrated how you could blow air through the straws and the children tried to do that as well.  Some of the children noticed the water moving right away, others noticed a “hole” or a “circle” was created when we blew onto/into the water.  Our next few days of investigation we used basters to move air into/onto the water.  Again the children noticed the circles we created in the water.  They also explored how the water moved when you placed the baster in the water, and when you held it above.  Again the children talked about waves.

Building on this idea of waves, we explored waves at a group time as well.  We watched videos of waves of varying strength/intensity on the iPad.  We also used bottles filled with oil and water to explore how the water moved.  Some of the children made connections between the wave bottles and the movement of the water.  Others have not yet made that connection.  We will continue to explore these concepts.

Next week we plan to explore the “circles” or “holes” we created in the water.  We will be dropping objects into different depths of water, exploring the different outcomes.