Thursday Group - More Items that Sink and Float

This session of playgroup continued with water play, combining some familiar and new items to the water table. Some of these items sank and some would float on the water. I included large stones and shells, metal napkin rings, cellophane, mylar, silk fabric, ribbon, square tin platter, bubble wrap, plastic eggs, a slinky, wood blocks, musical shaker eggs and hollow oval foam pieces. Splashing is still a popular activity at the water table and once one gets going the others can't help but join in.

Zadie rejoined group this week after a few weeks away. When she first came to the table she brought a ball that she had found with her. This limited her explorations because she wasn't ready to let it go. She used one hand to explore the other items until she finally let it free. Every item in the water table had many different ways a child could explore it. The plastic eggs, for example when put together would float but once taken apart would fill with water and sink. One could also place items inside a half of the egg. Zadie discovers this a little while later.



Sebastien explored many of the items orally (he even showed me a few items needed to be removed... leave it to my son to bite off a piece of bubble wrap). He also interacted with a wood block once he noticed how it moved when the water was moving, he watched it bob up and down before he picked it up. Then he pushed it down in the water, like he was slashing and finally he threw it. Another aspect of his exploration was to find an object and then walk away from the water table to take it elsewhere, almost like the water was distracting him from the object. I can't help but wonder what his plan was.



I could tell that Max was a little disappointed that the water table wasn't full of balls. He began his exploration by very methodically taking each item he came in contact with out of the water and dropping each one on the floor. The metal napkin ring made a great sound as it hit the floor and then rolled around which made Max happy. As Max mad peace with the fact that the water table was minus his favorite item he soon found a wet piece of fabric particularly fun to whip around.