I'm just having an early-morning play with Anya and I've had a great demonstration of how babies are really little empiricists.
We have a big metal mixing bowl she loves playing with. It's got everything: an intriguing shape, dim shifting reflections in its surface, and it makes a satisfying "bong" when she batters it.
This morning she was bashing it with a wooden spoon and seemed to notice that, when she held it aloft with one hand on the rim, it makes a particularly dramatic, Rank Organisation-style clang. She then put it down on the ground so the ring was muted by the carpet, and banged it again. Listened; picked it up again and made the full-volume "bong".
She repeated this enough times that it was clear she was basically doing an experiment to see if holding the bowl up was what turned it into a gong. And I suppose this is what babies are doing all the time, any time they learn a new skill or fact about the world. But I've not often seen such a pointed illustration of it.
As usual, the photo misses the key moment, so you'll have to take my word for it till I get a phone with a better camera.
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