How Children Play and Learn

The Children’s Museum in Cincinnati is a big playing area. In some sections you can find the curators intention, to teach something. The realization is very disadvantageous. In the Water Park section are a lot of physical things you can learn, like forces, torques, compression, speed, buoyancy, or lever principle but I think that the children’s need the possibility to see and compare things for understanding. For example the boats cold be out of different materials. They will learn that wood swims and metal doesn’t. Or the water bucket, if there is one with a single rope and other with a tackle the kids will learn that one is easier to lift. There are also a lot of pipes, connecter and ventiels for constructing pipe systems. The problem is that all this stuff is laing in the water, there are only tree fix sources and so the kids don't what’s to do with this stuff. Another problem is the height and width of the pool, we had problems to get the stuff in the middle. In the ball section it was similar, there are a lot of wheels and lever, but I don't think that the kids realized what happen if they apply one of them. There is a big box over their heads which can be filled with balls in different ways. By random time the box opened and it rains balls, the kids liked this most, but how should the kids understand how it works if there are no conditions. One boy puts balls he collected in the box by an evaluator, but after two or three balls the box opened and he doesn't know if he should run to the ball shower or to finish his lifting work. If I compare it to the Berlin children museum I have to say that his is more instructional.