Monday 5 March 2012

the fascinations of a drop of water...

  


I’m exploring water with the year five class at Dunkirk at the moment – we’ve been making many different investigations and enquiries and testing out so many ideas.  We’ve been using water inside and outside on many different scales and we’ve walked to see the water that is in spaces near to the school.  We’ve had snow, ice, fog, rain and been able to work with all of these – which has led to really rich investigations, questions and dialogue.

A recent session involved using pipettes to drop single droplets of water onto different surfaces to test out waterproof properties of materials.  I’ve loved the depth with which the children really look at things they discover.  They are a very kinaesthetic group and test out ideas in many varied ways – and as a consequence, they notice a great deal.


They were fascinated with the drops of water – watching and touching as the single drops glowed like diamonds … or pulled together like magnets … or how many drops could be pulled together to form a bigger drop… or how the drops acted like magnifying lenses…


  

“…inquiry is the impetus to understanding.  We construct our world in the interrogations we make of it, the questions we put to it… it seems that we can develop our understanding only through our own inquiries…”
Roy Prentice

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