The rain has fallen relentlessly, leaving large puddles scattered across your outdoor play space – the perfect opportunity for an intentional educator to spark maths and science learning through play.
Really, you ask? Is it that simple?
Many young children find the attraction of water difficult to resist and love to play in puddles. We have all seen it. The joy, the delight, the squealing and the laughter! So why not harness that natural fascination to spark some maths and science learning?
An opportunity to connect play and learning
The informed early childhood educator knows when to step in as a guide and when to step back as an observer, recognising that their professional judgement is central to facilitating and extending children’s learning (EYLF V2.0).
Such professional judgement allows the educator to strike a balance between creating opportunities for extended periods of time, and stepping in to extend the child’s experience. These choices respect the child as a strong and capable learner who is an active participant and decision maker.
Striking the right balance will ensure the educator values and builds on the child’s mathematical and scientific skills and knowledge and safeguards the child’s engagement in and motivation for this learning now and in the future.
“Watching and noticing what is happening on Country can be a rich source of learning,” says CELA early education specialist Jannelle Gallagher. “The ants may be making raised walls around their ant nests on the ground to prevent water from infiltrating their home, or the rain bird may sing, heralding that rain isn’t far away. Observing these signs connects children to science, the arts, and Indigenous ways of knowing and noticing.”
Here are four of the many maths and science areas you can explore in a puddle:
| Earth sciences |
Chemical science |
• Sinking and floating experiences exploring the properties of water
• Water cycle – understanding weather |
• The water cycle – understanding liquids, gases and solids, constancy and change
• Floating and sinking – density, properties of matter, cause and effect |
| Measurement |
Environmental science |
• Attributes of depth, area and circumference
• Time – duration, the sequence of events, days of the week
• Comparison – size, depth, location, temperature, colour, shape |
• Sustainability
• Interdependence of living things on water |
Sinking and floating experiences
Invite children to collect natural resources such as sticks, leaves, and rocks from around the puddle. Have additional items available that you have previously collected, such as pumice, shells, pebbles, and bark.
Before beginning the exploration, invite the children to make predictions about whether each object will sink or float, encouraging them to explain their thinking. Use prompts and open-ended questions to extend their curiosity, such as:
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“I wonder if…”
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“Tell me what you notice?”
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“What do you think will happen to this puddle if the sun comes out?”
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“What kinds of things might live in or around a puddle?”
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“Why do you think that stick floated?”
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“Why did the rock sink?”
By scaffolding children’s wonderings and questions, you can guide them to experiment with key scientific concepts, including:
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Density: Observe the relative weight of objects and how this affects whether they float or sink. Compare items of similar size, such as a rock and a piece of pumice, to demonstrate high and low density.
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Changes in matter: Sprinkle a little dirt into the puddle and notice what happens. Then add a larger amount of dirt to see how this changes the water.
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Cause and effect: Combine heavy and light objects, such as placing a pebble on a leaf, and watch the results.
Bring the learning indoors by using a water table to continue experimenting with both natural and man-made materials. This helps children transfer and adapt their understanding of sinking and floating concepts from one context (the puddle) to another (the water table).
- Extend the exploration by inviting children to make simple boats, testing how design and weight affect whether they float or sink.
- Support them to record their findings visually using a chart with the headings Float and Sink, drawing or placing pictures of objects in the correct column.
- You can also introduce technology by letting children take photos of their experiments using a digital camera or tablet.
Finally, gather the group to read and discuss the picture book What Floats in a Moat? by Lynne Berry and Matthew Cordell, connecting their hands-on investigations with storytelling and shared learning.
Measuring and mapping the puddles
Measurement
Ask children the question: "I wonder if the puddle will get smaller or bigger by the end of the week?"
Mindmap the children’s predictions and the reasons for their thoughts.
Use informal measuring resources:
- sticks can measure depth
- string can measure the circumference
Talk about why these methods of measuring work and what other things could be used to measure size. Take photos of the area the puddle covers.
Suggest that children create a visual representation to map the outcomes of measuring each morning of the week. Discuss ideas with children about how to use the measurements from the sticks and the string to compare each day’s measurements.
Each day invite children to estimate if they think the puddle has become bigger or smaller before measuring. You can use mathematical and scientific words such as depth, circumference, area, bigger, smaller, deeper, shallower.
At the end of the week, compare all the measurements and discuss the results. Support the children to hypothesise why the results occurred and if they differed from their predictions.
Introduce a tape measure for more formal measurement to assign a number to the measurement assisting in the child’s number sense and proficiency in measurement.
Mapping
If there is more than one puddle in the environment, create a map of all the puddles. Understanding and creating maps draws on the child’s knowledge of shape, position, direction and relationships between shapes, position direction and the relationships between spatial objects.
Exploring the water cycle
Eventually, puddles dry up and children who have been playing and learning in these natural pools may ask, Where did the puddle go?
- If they don’t, an intentional educator can ponder aloud, I wonder where the puddle went?
- Support the children to hypothesise by gathering their voices to the act of wondering.
- Suggest the use of the internet to find the answer.
This is one example of a video, chosen because of its simple and fun explanation using stages of the water cycle. The video below uses scientific terms to explain the concepts of evaporation, condensation and precipitation as well as transpiration and sublimation.
Set up an experiment to show the water cycle in action:
- Boil an electric kettle full of water.
- As the kettle boils the child can see the vapour coming out the spout.
- Capture the vapour with a glass or dish so children can easily see the condensation and the vapour or gas turning back to a liquid.
- This demonstrates the cycle of water between vapour and liquid states.
You can consider engaging in a further activity which will help children’s understanding of the three states of matter which water can attain (liquid, vapour, solid), as well as the concept of constancy and change.
- Invite children to collect some natural resources from their outdoor environment in a large container (one that can fit in the freezer).
- Fill the container with water and then put it in the freezer.
- Predict, observe and discuss the changes that may be taking place while out of sight.
- Once frozen, remove the ice from the container and place it outside to once again predict, observe and discuss the changes that occur.
Note: This article first appeared in Amplify in 2019, and we enjoyed it so much we felt it deserved a fresh look and a reshare.
Further reading and resources:
National Science Week 2025 website
CSIRO: National Science Week's Storytime featuring Lucky's Star
Deadly Science website
Riley Callie Resources: First Nations STEM in the class room webinar