3 Great Games for a Wading Pool
Written By Nathaniel Reade
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2. Raid the Kitchen, the Playroom, the Recycling Bin.
Take some plastic funnels to a hardware store and find the right size of clear plastic tubing to fit over the end (1-inch tubing costs about $1.50 a foot). Cut the tubing into lengths of 1 to 3 feet, at least one piece per child. Some kids will use the tubes alone to blow bubbles. Older children can attach a funnel to one end of a tube and use it to fill bottles and buckets. Show them how pinching the end of a tube leads to discoveries about water pressure and flow.
Toss into your pool some plastic watering cans, clean yogurt containers, funnels, buckets, measuring cups, sponges, 2-inch paintbrushes, a Barbie in need of a bath. Then step back. Aaron, age 3, created a game he called "paint the baby," which consisted of brushing water on 19-month-old Stella, who actually tolerated it.
Ask the kids... how many scoops of a measuring cup it takes to fill each container. Ask them to predict what will sink and what will float. Ask them why.
What's going on? Lessons in counting, measurement, and the conservation of volume — a pint is a pint, whether it goes into a tall, skinny container or a short, wide one.
