Happy First Day of Spring! To celebrate the change of seasons, we took our explorations outside to enjoy our rainy weather. Before going outside, I told the children that we needed to collect some rainwater for a project for our plants. I asked them to make a list of items that they thought we could use to do this. We came up with all sorts of containers that might work, including buckets, bowls, and even a bag! After making our list, we searched around school to gather up the items we needed.

We ventured out to the parking lot where the children enjoyed jumping in puddles and catching rain with their tongues! The weather was certainly no hinderance to their play.

Splashing in the puddles!

Some of the children discovered water quickly rushing down through a gutter on the front of the building’s exterior wall. A crowd gathered as the children began using the stream from the gutter to fill their various vessels for water collection. We were able to fill up our containers easily and quickly using this water source. I had anticipated having to leave our containers outside to fill up and come back to later, so this discovery was a welcome surprise! The gutter led to a discussion on how the varying sizes of the containers affected not only how much water they could hold, but also how quickly they could be filled. We discovered that while the big mixing bowls and buckets could hold the most water, they also took a much longer time to be filled up.

After collecting the necessary rainwater, we went back inside for our next steps. We dumped all of our containers of water into one bucket, which we then carried around the piazza to water all of our many plants. The children each took turns filling a cup and feeding the plants.

Later on during Projects & Play, a group of children gathered on the carpet to develop and play a cooperative movement game with scarves. Their game involved throwing the scarves up in the air and catching them before they reached the ground. As I questioned the children about their game, they told me that they were only using blue scarves because the blue scarves were “water.” (When I asked why not other colors, they responded that the red scarves were deemed unacceptable because they were “lava” and the orange scarves were “spiders.”) I couldn’t help but wonder if this particular game was somehow inspired by the events of our morning exploration!