Friday, May 10, 2013

Play Water Pump Races

The Tulip Festival in Woodburn Oregon attracts visitors from around the region. Even on rainy and cold days you can find people there (this rainy and cold day it was me). They have some neat kids activities. One I was particularly interested in was the water pump duck races.



Kids or a helpful adult pumps the hand pumps until enough water floods their chutes to push their ducks along. I like the activity because it has a lot of variation; each pump has little differences, each chute has a different amount or size of ducks, and everyone pumps differently. 

Only the older kids understood that is was a race, but the little ones had just as much fun. I can see this providing hours of fun at a school or early childhood center too.
A few design details:
- both ends of the chutes sat over animal  troughs that held the water
- the pumps were actually pumping water from these troughs
- the chutes were made of gutter materials
- loos parts of the rubber ducks made it all worth while


This is another venture into the world of hand pumps. I liked these, for their intended purpose. It would not work in all applications, but on this drizzly spring day it was engaging, functional  and entertaining.

See my other post on hand pumps Finding the Perfect Hand Pump


8 comments:

  1. At first, I thought this was a real pump, then it revealed that it was a child's plaything, well, I'm sure its fun to play with.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was fun to play with and it is a real pump! We had to prime it and everything. Providing real life tools and experiences is an important way for young people to learn.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Its a Great fun for child to play with these pumps.........

    ReplyDelete
  4. This sounds like a great time. I'd love to play this!

    ReplyDelete
  5. That sounds like fun! Great way to teach young children about saving water & irrrigation! Just water pumps have range of water pumps available in Australia!

    ReplyDelete
  6. the older kids understood that is was a race, but the little ones had just as much fun.

    ReplyDelete
  7. What's up mates, pleasant piece of writing and good arguments commented here, I am in fact enjoying
    by these.

    Also visit my web page - Ricky Salvador

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...