If you Google “pouring beans”, we are number 3 in the listings. And rightly so. Bronze is a fitting medal considering the effort we put in here.
The top two results are both websites describing an activity called “pouring beans” which is a lesson used at Montessori day nurseries. Since we do very little bean pouring here, and the pouring of Montessori beans is clearly more popular than we are, I think it’s time we examined this practice. I also think that if we put the pouring beans activity on our Pouring Beans website we might get bumped up the listings.
Here is the full guide for you to try at home.
| Age | 2½ to 3 years |
| Materials | Two identical jugs, beans, tray, mat |
| Aim | To pour the beans from one jug to the other and then back |
| Learning outcomes | Concentration! Patience! Hand-eye co-ordination! Hand control! Eyes! Beans! Pouring the beans! |
| Instructions | You… I mean, you get the kid to pour beans from one jug to another. If you want to make it more complicated than that, there’s some more detailed instructions here, but I expect the kid will lose interest before you finish explaining it and go and run around for a bit instead. |
| Extending the activity | Use smaller grains. Use bigger grains. Use smaller jugs. Use bigger jugs. Do it without jugs. Do it without beans or jugs and just imagine it. Sit in silence and think about beans. Just sit in silence. Just be quiet. Why can’t you be quiet. Now go back to pouring beans. |
| Variations | Use different beans or rice or dice or something else. |
I’ve spent the evening doing this and I can confirm three things.
- It’s relaxing for the first two or three minutes.
- After the first few minutes you start to get very bored, and then shortly after that you begin to lose your mind. After an hour I had named all the individual beans and was taking register while they tipped from one jug to the other.
- The version of Pouring Beans that we’ve been doing, that is less directly bean-related and more about blogging, is far more enjoyable and deserves to be first in the Google search ranking.
19 comments on “Pouring beans”
That is far too meta for me to do. I can’t pour beans on Pouring Beans. Next you’ll be telling me to taste cards on tastecard.co.uk. I don’t want to taste card.
I’m not going to tell you to do that. But I am going to tell you to book some faces on Facebook.com.
I don’t need to book any faces, I have plenty of face for one person as it is. I’ve now got more eyes than you’ve had hot dinners.
Why would you book a face anyway?
Maybe if you wanted to reserve it for later, so that you didn’t arrive at the face and find someone else there.
The last time I caught someone on the face that I had booked, well, let’s just say I did a “Steve Stevingtons” on that poor soul and they spent a fortnight in A & E. Stay away from my pre-booked face, everyone.
(what?)
The point is, have you poured some beans from one jug to another yet? I think it’s pretty important if we want to increase our readership. I forget how it will help but I have retained my absolute certainty that it will.
I do have two jugs I can use and I suppose I could pick up some beans over the weekend. If this is going to increase the traffic coming through these here parts then okay, I’ll do it.
… would ravioli entice more or less people to come here?
Unless we rename the website to pouringravioli.com I can’t see how that would help.
I plan to pour butter beans between two particularly large jugs (wheeeeey! what?) to create a spectacular display.
Right, no ravs only beans. Gotcha. I’ll get cracking on that right away.
When I say right away I mean maybe in a week or so. Like a boss.
A boss would delegate the pouring to someone else. I suggest you get Kev to do it. He has lots of free time.
I didn’t do any of this. In fact I forgot. I’m going to forget again.
#soz
You don’t need to do any of this! That’s the beauty of being like a boss, like what you are. Just tell Kev to get on with it, or else you’ll sack him, and then sit back and forget as much of it as you like. #leadership
Not only #leadership but also #friendship.
Thanks mate #matesquared
Let’s sail these ships somewhere high up so we can shout obscenities at Kev while he does a terrible job.
#winning
Kev, I have always wondered why you selectively respond to posts rather than the shammalammadingdong all at the same time.
#reasons (#noreasons)
You see you, right, you need to start replying to ALL posts and not just the ones you want to.
#nope
You can’t ‘nope’ card me. That’s not a thing, unless we’re playing the excellent card game ‘Exploding Kittens’.