This week’s sunshine & total lack of rain have given me opportunities for indulging a favourite pastime – observing, relatively objectively, small children as they explore, learn about, hypothesise & experiment with & in the world.
The current baby boom is providing plenty of subjects, especially those who are only just learning to walk & are able to practice out in the open with more freedom than when encumbered by heavy clothes & wellington boots.
I don’t think that I had ever registered before that those who have only recently acquired this skill always walk with both hands up & slightly away from the body for balance as they tend to shift their weight almost as much from side to side as simply forwards.
One little girl was clearly delighted by her new freedom to move so far away from mummy & daddy who sat by watching, anxiously ready to run to her aid if something went wrong.
After about ten yards she needed to put her hand on one of the benches to rebalance.
The benches are made of solid sheets of vandal-proof metal, which gets warm, though not dangerously so, in the sun. You could see her surprise as she registered this fact; she then moved to the next bench & quite deliberately put out her hand to check its warmth, then repeated the process with a third bench. This seemed enough to prove her hypothesis & off she went to have a look at the fountains – which was daddy’s cue to get up & move, closer on guard.
She looked to me as if she was still several weeks away from her first birthday, which made me ponder; if it is true that babies are born with legs which are more developed these days, does this mean that the average age at which they first walk has also been coming down, & are there more babies these days who skip the crawling stage altogether?
You also notice how, regardless of cultural or ethnic origin, all small children take great delight in, become absorbed & excited by, things like water (especially fountains & puddles which can be splashed in), bubbles, balloons, roundabouts & chasing pigeons (this latter more interesting to boys).
These could all be said to be there first investigations of physics.
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