What really matters- Exploring their world- Hands-on discovery is what early learning is all about. Our toddlers learn about their world by getting opportunities for rich exploration and discovery. To experience their world first hand. Just hanging out at a pool offers all sorts of experiments to discover the properties of water and liquids-- stuff our toddlers will be dealing with for their entire lives. In addition to developing a richer relationship with and understanding of water, our toddlers work many important skills as they march through their experiments.                                                 

How to put it into practice-

My Experience-

Here on one sunny afternoon, I observed Whitney run through some really interesting water experiments in our local baby pool:

1. 1.First, Whitney experimented with the transferability of water. She poured the water from one cup to the other and discovered how as long as you get it in the cup, water seems to easily move from one to the other maintaining its volume. (Seeing Transfering Back & Forth video)
   

2. 2.Then Whitney experimented with what would happen if she kept pouring water into the same up. She discovered that the one cup has a limit to what it can hold and water overflows out the sides if you keep pouring. (See Water Overflow video)
   

3. 3.Whitney quickly moved to experiments with water displacement. She observed that if you press one cup into the other cup that water comes up and squirts out the top. She also notices that when she pours the water out of the bottom cup that squeezing the cup inside no longer makes water come out (see Water Displacement video).
   

Tuning In-

We as adults take all this for granted as we have had years and years of experiences with water to build up our understandings and intuitions. Our toddlers are discovering these types of findings for the very first times and we need to experience these events through their eyes seeing the fresh wonder and excitement of it all

Extending/Bridging-

How we support these experiments and discoveries is to behave like a fresh scientific assistant. When I notice whitney staring at the water overflowing, I might say “yes, look the cup does not hold any more water; it is overflowing!”. When she squeezes the cup inside the other with water “Look the cup displaced the water and the water is squirting out.” Or when there is no more water in the cup, I say Look the cup does not make it squirt when there is no water in the first cup.” Again our toddlers receptive vocabulary is always beigger than their generative vocabulary so even though she is not speaking it, she may very well understand those words. And pointing out the effects of her actions helps her better reflect and learn from her experiences.