At Guillemont, my first headship, we did a wonderful river study at a local park.
Despite this being aimed at older children, our location next to the river was so good it seemed a shame to not try to replicate the learning.
So, Flossy and Freya our in their swimming costumes and we set up an investigation.
Experiment 1 – water depth
We strung a washing line across the river as a guide to make sure we were measuring perpendicular to the river bank.
Freya measured two ruler lengths from the bank and marked the point using the light fury (a white Playmobil dragon that pinched the washing line). She then measured the depth of the water using a long stick. With Flossy’s help Freya used a ruler to measure how deep the water was as shown on the stick. I wrote down the results in a table from the warm and sunny bank 🙂
She repeated this every 60cm across the river.
After lunch we dried off and wrote up the results.
Freya explained the process, built the results table and then created a line graph to show the river bed.
She loved turning the graph upside down to see the actual bed of the river as she had mapped it.
We decided on some more investigating to do and also discussed RE running our depth study if and when it rained again!
*update with rainy weather measurements 🙂
