Exploring the Bucket Balance

Vito is 27 months old.
I have this bucket balance years ago and was mostly used by Mavi (Measuring Mass of an Object). He’s been using it to learn concepts like mass units and the concept of gravity.  I’m so hesitant to let Vito use it for the obvious reason that at his age, he might break it or doesn’t know how to use it.  But I was wrong!  One day, I ran out of ideas for him so I bravely took our bucket balance and a bunch of Duplos for him to explore.  Well, lo and behold!  It was a total hit and I didn’t expect that he’ll enjoy using it!


So what did Vito exactly do with the balance and what are the things he discovered?
First, it goes up and down! This was the first thing he learned! Up and down, up and down he keeps on saying it as he manipulates the scale by placing Duplos in the bucket.


See his smile?


Then he realized he can control it as well by moving the center hold. So he’s ignoring the weights (Duplos) but controlling the balance by moving the center to left and right, thus making the scale goes up or down.


Next, he discovered that there’s a mini drawer where he can open and close. So we practiced it, open and close saying those words all together to learn the concept.


He started putting in some objects (weight) to see what will happen. And he closes it and said “hide”.


Vito kept playing with this for the next 30 minutes, and we varied the number of Duplos in each bucket to see the effects.


I honestly didn’t know that this old learning material of Mavi can have a big effect on Vito. It’s currently one of his favourite “toy” and we kept on using it as a tool in play pretend.  This is such an amazing tool for introducing early concepts of math, science and simple machines! This Learning Resources Bucket Balance if you have the chance can also be a wonderful gift for birthdays and Christmas. I’m happy that both of my boys have benefited from this!

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