One activity that toddlers and young preschoolers never tire
of is filling and dumping. A container full of anything – sand, toys, food – is
often quickly dumped over, its contents spilling to the ground. An empty container
is often filled (even if not what was originally in it), sometimes to the top,
as a mix of puzzle pieces, toy food, and playdough reaches the top and spills
over, prompting the child to eagerly dump it out again.
This process of dumping and filling, filling and dumping, is
one of the ways that young children explore how the physical world works, and
experiment with their actions on objects. Filling and dumping involves thinking
about size, volume, incline, force, gravity, and cause and effect. What
sometimes looks to adults like “making a mess” is actually a complex long-term
project of figuring out the relationship between a container and the objects
that fit inside.
In my classroom, I provide many activities that give
children an opportunity to explore filling and dumping. Some of the best
materials for filling and dumping are “loose parts” - open ended,
non-representational materials that can be used in a variety of ways. Finding
appropriate materials for toddlers and twos can be challenging, since so many “loose
parts” are small enough to fit in their mouths, or are easily smashed and
crushed.
Pompoms and cotton balls are two wonderful materials for
this age group (and older preschoolers too). A simple “fill and dump” activity
is to put out empty juice bottles with small plates of cotton balls.
The children were fascinated watching the cotton ball drop
to the bottom of the large bottle, but they cotton balls were hard to dump out
through the narrow top. So, the next day I switched to shorter applesauce jars
that they could fit their hands into.
Setting up the materials in the sensory table provided more
room for dumping, and made it easier for the children to control where the
cotton balls went. I combined the cotton balls with pompoms to make it colorful, and added napkin rings – another “loose part”, but with a different shape,
weight and texture. I also added tongs as an option for picking the objects up,
The children used the materials in ways that I expected,
and in ways that I didn’t.
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