Unsteady groundwater flow in a three-layer unconfined aquifer has been studied theoretically and experimentally. Two different methods have been used in solving the governing equations of the flow, the nonlinear partial differential equations; (1) The governing equations are linearized for each layer and approximate solutions are obtained. (2) The governing equations are transformed to nonlinear ordinary differential equations, which are solved numerically by Runge-Kutta procedure. Fine, middle sized and coarse sands are used in the experiments. It is found that the solutions from the method(2) ( the reduction of partial differential equations to ordinary differential equations) give better agreement with the experimental results than the solution from the method(1).