We raised up the platform with holes in the bird area and added half-pipes underneath. It’s not unusual for children not to take to a change in the environment straightaway, and this didn’t attract much interest on Wednesday, but when Mark brought Kesler’s attention to it on Thursday, he was intrigued. He began passing different materials down a pipe, and noticed that a wooden bar in front affected which materials went down, and he did some problem solving around this.

After Chris came over and did some investigating, Henry joined Kesler. Having used this structure’s hole as a bird’s home previously, this was a natural extension of that exploration. Henry sent his bird down the pipe, mimicking what Kesler was doing with other materials. At one point, Henry’s foot knocked a pipe down as we walked around, and now began the task of  how to replace it. He and Kesler ended up working together on this, and they became curious, and began removing and replacing other pipes, too. At one point Henry’s bird had trouble getting through a hole to the pipe beneath, and they collaborated on this as well. Later, Henry commented that only the bird’s belly fit into the small hole in the structure, however, his arm could fit in easily, as you can see in the photo below. (The pile of materials on the ground is the bird’s bed, and the bird’s nest is its regular resting place beneath Henry’s clipboard.)