Exploring How Water Moves

 With the temperature in the high 90s lately, I thought we could use some fun outdoor cooling down activities.  However our sweet doofus of a dog and high energy cats make a lot of activities unavailable to us. Case in point, last summer our dog ate the water balloons and the cats, who were running from the dog, leaped onto the inflatable pool. Next thing I know there's 2 cats and a dog sitting the middle of what used to be a pool. So this year called for something different.

At the preschool I had been working at, we did an exploration of how objects move in water. I had thought this unit should have started with the question, how water moves? So I decided to find a way to watch the movement of water.  Levi, loves water. He can sit and watch water move for hours. Well, maybe not that long, but far longer than I can.  So I thought why not let him show us how water moves.

I handed him the hose and the next part was sheer magic.  Levi created a water slide.  The simplest action made into a days worth of fun and exploration.  And I found myself thinking, why hadn't I thought of that?

The water slide then became rain as the girls took turns spraying the water high into the air while the other two, not with the hose, held umbrellas and waited for the water to cascade down upon them.

The kids' ideas for using products we already had and creating a new spin on them inspired me as well. So after lunch I pulled out the marble tracks.  We filled up a series of different sized buckets and containers and I placed a series of different sized cups by the track. Then I posed this question to the kids, How do you think the water will move through the marble tracks? Do you think it will make a difference if you used different cups to pour the water in?

The kids set out building their track for the water. Levi, who was more interested in pouring the water on the track made the process a bit slow, but eventually we had our track built.

 

The kids changed the track several times. Eventually we put a dash of food coloring in the water buckets to watch how the colored water would meld together to create different colors.  It was a great experiment and lots of fun. And best of all, it kept us cool during the hot day.  :)