One of the children was building with the set of transluscent connecting tubes, building a
long line of tubes. He stretched them across the table, and the stood the line
of tubes on its end, before putting it back down, and getting ready to walk
away.
I asked, “I wonder what would fit inside?”
He looked at me curiously, not knowing where to start. I suggested we look in
the baskets of math manipulatives and see what might fit inside. He examined
each basket, and selected several objects to try – a rubber car, a small
plastic cat, and a counting bear. None of them fit.
I brought over a basket of art materials. He searched through it, and chose some
pompoms, which to his excitement, fit inside. He pushed pompom after pompom
into the tubes.
But then, the question became how to get them out?
He tried pushing them with his finger, and then with a popsicle stick. Then he
tried a pipe cleaner, which easily pushed the pompoms out to the other side.
But then his attention shifted to a new question – how to make the pipe
cleaners travel through the tunnel of pipes. He pushed in one after the other, lifting
and angling the pipes until the pipe cleaners fell out the other side. Soon
another child came over to watch, and eagerly gathered the pipe cleaners as
they slid through. The pompoms were forgotten, as the children discovered this new material that fit inside, and slid through, much more easily.
A simple prompt of “I wonder…..” sparked these series of
experiments and discoveries. Building a tunnel of pipes was an easy task, one he
did every day. But the right question, at the right moment, initiated his drive
to search for new problems to solve, and to figure out the answers for himself.
