We brought some clear tubing today and it fitted perfectly on some glass bottles that I put food colouring in -initially just to pour down the tube but when the hose fitted so sungly into the bottles the game changed…. so there is 2 meters of tube with a bottle at each end with a different coloured water in it. The tube contains air. You raise one end, air rises and some of the water enters the tube from the high end.

This was just for fun. Helena liked clear tubing with coloured water when she was little and we happened to pass somewhere selling it. On the way home we whispered down the tube to each other, trying hard to do it quiet enough so it didn’t blow our ears off.

I could say this was some carefully planned exercise learning about colour mixing but na it became an exercise all about words, communicating ideas, negotiating and having stuff the way you want it. Starting from the initial stalemate when one child took an uncompromising position and I intervened – probably should have left it a little longer… I just pointed out that they’d got their way but were now standing in the garden alone holding the BLUE up the HIGHEST and was that still fun… a compromise involving turns and time was quickly thought of and it was game on..

I’m a little slow at pressing the record button on my phone but this is the tail end of it..

“…become purple” “lets see” “and a bit red too I think” “look at it, it’s purple” “yeah look” “a bit of blue, a bit of green and yellow …. we’ve got a hose whole(hole) full” “look at it now” “Raise it” “but I don’t think it can hold much more” “yeah it’s completely home” “I want to change and have none on this end and just put beads in….”

It’s  now so full of beeds, some float and some don’t.

Due to slow user error I didn’t record the bit where they were asking each other open ended questions, how abouting, and building on each others ideas. That’s where the learning was.