Flashlights and Pop Tubes

 

Saige has been interested in the pop tubes. When she first played with them a week ago, she connected three in a link: It’s a baby toy.

This week, Saige puts a flashlight inside a collapsed yellow pop tube and jiggles it back and forth. You can see the light moving inside.

Other children like the idea and try it, inventing variations. Luca expands his tube before putting a flashlight inside, then moves it through the tube, which is a big U shape.

Saige decides to try expanding her tube too, then wonders about making the tube into a circle (with the flashlight inside). She repeats that with Mark’s red pop tube and puts it around her neck.

Ruthie stops by, holding colorful curlers; she gives two to Mark and they use them like binoculars to look at each. Upon seeing Saige’s pop tube with the flashlight inside, Ruthie takes a closer look, with the curler tube up to her eye. She picks up a pop tube of her own, asking Mark to hold it so she can pull to expand it. She squeezes it back together and does this again with Mark several times. Then she spies a pipe on the floor and tries to insert her tube into the pipe from a distance. When that doesn’t work, she picks up the pipe and pulls the tube all the way through, doing this a couple of times.

Amelia, too, likes the idea of a flashlight in a pop tube, and puts one inside hers, closes the circle, and shakes it back and forth, calling it a maraca. Kyla joins her and puts two flashlights in her pop tube, and Saige comes over to check it out.

Travers uses the pop tubes to represent the engine for the fishing boat that he and others are riding on.