Concentric Circles in Nature
Some of the nursery children had been looking at finding concentric circles in nature. Some examples of this include looking at ripples in ponds and the rings inside trees.
Concentric circles form naturally in trees as the bark grows throughout the year. The children were very excited to see these rings not only in trees but inside beetroots too. Some of the children’s thoughts about this are given below.
Investigating Tree Slices
“It has circles on it all around. The brown circles. I will draw it.”
“They look like they have the same circles on them”
“It’s separate the circles”
“These are all circles, then the have separate circles on them.”
“Concentric circles”
“The come from the trees”
Investigating Beetroots
“We have to cut them up”
“I know it’s separate circles ”
“Like in the wood”
“Concentric circles”
Experimenting With Puddles
The children also investigated dropping objects in puddles. They spent some time discussing how they could change the size of the splash. Experimenting with changing the size of a splash is discussed in our article Rocks in Water.
One of the nursery practitioners took some photos of the ripples made in the water and asked the children what they could see.
“Dropped stones into water”
“Made a big splash”
“And a little splash”
Teacher: Are there any concentric circles?
A child then recalled that concentric circles are:“Two or more circle that are inside each other”
A child pointed to the image and said:“There one”
If the children wanted to, they could experiment more with making concentric circle ripples. They could try repeatedly dipping a circular object into a tub of water and seeing the waves form. To read more about experiments with ripples, you can read our article on ripples.
