Our favourite 3: Water

Water plays such an important role in our lives and in many routines at early childhood services: Putting your water bottle on the trolley when you arrive, washing your hands before meals, taking turns watering the vegetables. Water offers relief from heat, thirst and boredom. Children love splashing in water on a warm day, and educators often need to find ways to allow children to explore water without wasting it.

Our longest-running and very popular workshop at Little Scientists is our Water workshop. As children are naturally drawn to water play, educators are often looking for opportunities to extend the children’s learning in everyday scenarios, and books could be a good input for discussions and explorations.

In Alexander’s outing, a little duck gets stuck at the bottom of a hole and passers-by save him by filling the hole with water. Clever but simple, this is a great example for collaborative problem-solving. What is the best way to transport water? Which other problems may be solved by adding water?

Big rain coming focuses on the importance of rain for people, animals and the land. The story is a great conversation opener for discussing weather, climate and sustainability as well as predictions and hypotheses.

With a focus on sinking and floating, mixing and dissolving, Wombat Stew can lead into fun explorations of important scientific concepts such as buoyancy and chemical reactions. 

Water is a resource that allows you and the children to have fun, get messy, think about the bigger picture, i.e. environmental implications, and explore scientific concepts with all your senses. So dive right in and enjoy some water-based STEM inquiry!