Thursday, February 13, 2014

How do Cars Move?

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.