How do Cars Move?
Week of 2/10/14
Mrs. Stone & Mrs. Hughes’ Room
We have been exploring bridges, ramps
and tunnels using the toys cars to explore these different structures. After
observing the children’s thinking and how they interact with the materials, I
saw that the students focus was on the cars and not so much on what the cars
were moving on. So we began to explore the cars using the large long ramp for
the children to move the cars on. I also brought in the wooden trucks to
introduce something that moved the same as the cars but still different. I
would ask the children, “How does it move?" or “Why did that happen?” I was curious to see what
the students thoughts were about how the cars and trucks moved.
Laya came over to the ramp and laid
down on it and picked up a car. She turned it over and began to move the wheels
with her finger. Later on, Mustafa had done something similar where he
manipulated the wheel to move with his finger. This showed me that the children’s
thinking was leading towards the wheels of the cars and that they were curious
of how they worked.
This week I projected a video of
cars, bikes and motorcycles driving down a street so the children can see these
different modes of transportation and how the wheels moved on them. The ramp
was set up in front of the video with the cars and trucks again to see if the
children make the connection. This time, when the children came over the cars
and trucks were flipped upside down to see if the children would notice how
they were not moving. Connor and Nadia came over and saw this and their first
instinct was to flip the car back over and watch it move down the ramp. The
children watched the video as they played, but I was unable to see any evidence
that it affected their play and thinking.