Week 5: Concepts, Experiences, and Integrating Activities
Chapter 8: Water 

      There are so many different concepts that can be learned and explored through the use of water. The text highlights quite a few experiences that can involve water, and various concepts can be learned as water involves so many aspects of our everyday lives. A sink and float activity that involved seeing how shape helps some things float reminded me of an experience I had with a particular activity done in Monica’s early primary programming class last year. We had the opportunity to make boats out of various materials and the objective was to see how much weight our boat could carry without it sinking. Size, shape and the materials used were all taken into consideration. I began to think of question that children might think of when doing this activity and realized how a simple concept could turn into such a great learning experience. As a child, I remember being so fascinated with the fact that certain things could sit on top of the water without sinking to the bottom. How could something that I could scoop up, slip through my fingers, drink and splash around in hold something as heavy as a boat up on top of the water. This got me thinking about how simple something might seem to us because we’ve just excepted and understood it, think its normal and just part of life. Children can look at things and have so many different outlooks and have so many elaborate rationales as to why things happen the way they do. I think it’s so important to give them as many opportunities as you can to share there outlooks and explanations as to why things happen the way they do. 
      
       Water can take you in so many different directions, and that was reflected in this chapter with the activities listed in the text. I think in many classrooms that I have worked in the main and in some cases, only focus that was made on water was filling the water bin up and changing the toys in it once or twice a week or changing the colour by putting a drop or two in of food colouring. This, in my opinion is alarming. Although exploration is important, materials and concepts need to be considered and planning is appropriate and necessary. Just reading through a couple pages of ideas, makes me think of the lack of experiences that were provided in some classrooms I have been in. This is not only seen in the area specifically devoted to water, but in all aspects of science. The focus and stress that is put on teachers in the area of literacy sometimes takes away from incorporating science into students everyday learning experiences. What I have been learning more about through this class is that many, if not all aspects of the curriculum can be covered during science lessons. There are no limits and not only science is being explore through these exploration activities, but communication, recordings, math through predictions and possible solving or figuring out solutions and even art. 

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