How the Every Which Weigh Scale & Pails helps your toddler make predictions

A balance scale as a toy? There’s a reason we designed a toddler plaything that looks like something from science class 😉 Between the ages of 2 and 4, your child will begin to use predictions to guide their behavior—and the Every Which Weigh Scale & Pails can help them learn: 

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5 ways to practice making predictions with the Every Which Weigh Scale & Pails

1. Spill some water—intentionally. Remove one pail from the scale and fill it with water. Ask your toddler to predict what will happen if you put your hand in the water. Place your hand in the pail and point out how water spills out the sides. Then refill and let your child try. 

2. Create a catapult. Remove both pails from the scale. Balance something soft—like a small cracker—on top of one of the arms. Then ask your child to predict what will happen if you push down hard on the opposite arm. Let the cracker fly 😀

3. Make a little noise. Get out a Wood Ball and Felt Ball (from The Inspector Play Kit). Hold one ball over each pail and ask your child to predict what will happen if you drop them. Let them fall. Observe how the Wood Ball makes a loud sound, while the Felt Ball is quiet. Then encourage your child to notice how the pails move: “This side went down. That means the Wood Ball is heavier.” 

4. Suspend the scale in the air. With the scale on the floor, put one of the Opposites Balls (from The Thinker Play Kit) in each pail. Encourage your child to notice which side moves down, and therefore which ball is heavier. Then, ask them to think about what might happen if the scale gets flipped upside down: “Will it still work?” Remove the pails, hold the scale upside down, and rehang the pails: “The side with the heavier ball still goes down, same as before!” 

5. Ask, “Does this fit?” Gather a few objects—some small and some big. One by one, ask your child if each object will fit in the pail, then check to see if they’re right: Does a bunny from Bunnies in a Felt Burrow (from The Babbler Play Kit) fit? What about the ”Animals I See” Board Book (from The Thinker Play Kit) and the Wheel Around Town Bus (from The Realist Play Kit)? For a giggle, try asking them, “What about you? Me? Daddy?” 

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Learn more about the research

Bonawitz, E. B., Ferranti, D., Saxe, R., Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., Woodward, J., & Schulz, L. E. (2010). Just do it? Investigating the gap between prediction and action in toddlers’ causal inferences. Cognition, 115(1), 104-117.

Bonawitz, E., Horowitz, A., Ferranti, D., & Schulz, L. E. (2009). “The block makes it go”: Causal language helps toddlers integrate prediction, action, and expectations about contact relations. Proceedings of the Thirty-first Cognitive Science Society.

Gopnik, A., Sobel, D. M., Schulz, L. E., & Glymour, C. (2001). Causal learning mechanisms in very young children: two-, three-, and four-year-olds infer causal relations from patterns of variation and covariation. Developmental Psychology, 37(5), 620.

Kayhan E, Heil L, Kwisthout J, van Rooij I, Hunnius S, et al. (2019) Young children integrate current observations, priors and agent information to predict others’ actions. PLOS ONE 14(5): e0200976.