Water Filter Challenge

By Mel Evans

Its no secret that here at Nature Nurture Sussex we are very passionate about messy play. Most of our sessions will feature a mud kitchen, water station or potion lab. You only need to watch a young child tipping, measuring, mixing and pouring to understand the benefits of these activities. Experimenting, creating, testing theories and trial and error can all be witnessed. Communication skills develop and new words are learned. Its also calming and a young child will happily tip water for long periods in the woodland setting.

Chalk, flowers, herbs and coloured water are all used to create a sensory invitation to play.

I was keen to see if the power of water play would work on my older children, so I set them a challenge. I filled a bucket full of water and mixed in some soil, small sticks and leaves. I told them we were playing a game and this was the only drinking water we had so they had to try and get it clean!

Our water supply.

I offered a few materials to help them. Some empty plastic bottles, some string, some scissors, some cups, a collection of odd socks and other old clothes, some hay, some wool packaging, some sand and some sawdust. They could also forage for things in the garden. You could use what ever resources you have available.

My eldest son got to work straight away and fashioned a ‘flask’ with holes in the bottom from an old plastic bottle. He then lined this with a sock and started pouring the water through. He repeated this process for a long time and noticed the more debris was removed the quicker the water moved through the system, He replaced the sock ‘filter’ several times and eventually ended up with water that was much cleaner.

My younger son was slower to get started so I suggested together we try a different approach. I strung an old bra between two sticks. I then encouraged him to line the cups with different materials and test their ability to filter the water. We found the padded bra was too thick to let the water through so opted for a lacy one.

We had a very happy afternoon in the garden pouring and experimenting and we managed to get the water (sort of) clean. Of course we didn’t actually drink the water and in a genuine survival situation it would have to be boiled or better still distilled after it had been filtered.

We talked about this and this led to an interesting conversation on desalination. It turns out the benefits if water play don’t have an age limit!

Almost good enough to drink!