Water Table Physics

Kudos to my husband in this post for making these stands for our water table.  They were a work in progress.  I had a vision of some stands to hold tubes and funnels for the children to manipulate and experiment with moving water.  The children helped me measure the height and width of our water table.
The first day the children played with them, we realized that the children had to stand on benches to reach the tops of the tubes. Each day we modified them according to the way the children played with them.  Now one has a board with holes facing vertical and one we turned to be horizontal.  We also made one shorter. (and by "we" of course, I mean my husband :-)

After seeing them, our head teacher showed me a funnel set she had ordered from Becker's School Supply. We combined them with the wooden sets for variety in the water table.  The plastic tubing was purchased at Home Depot in the plumbing section. We have several lengths and thicknesses available.  The table is also stocked with funnels of various sizes, pitchers and turkey basters.

The children experimented with the properties of physics at our sensory table by connecting the tubes to the funnels, pouring the water in to the tubes, as well as moving the water through the tubes with the turkey basters.  They loved watching the water move up the tubes and following its path through the tubes and eventually out.  We colored the water each day to make it easier to see in the tubes.  A few discovered the power of the air and suction in the turkey baster able to make the water move forward as well as suck it backwards.

Another strategy that the children implemented was to work together to pour a lot of water at a time into one tube trying to get it to move all the way to the other end.

Next week we are going to use the two stands that have horizontal holes to hold the funnels with sand in the sensory table.