Over the past few weeks in the
classroom the children have been very focused on the idea of motion and
movement. We decided to break this large
idea into several smaller threads to explore more specifically with the
children throughout the week.
I decided to
look at angles with the children and how various aspects of angles can have an
impact on how objects (specifically cars) move down the ramps. We started off by bringing in large gutters
into the classroom that the children could use as ramps. We initially explored how cars moved down the
gutters when the two gutters were at two different angles.
The children were very excited to see
their cars roll down the ramps. After
that, I wanted to see how the children would react if there were obstacles
placed on the ramps for the children. I
taped bumps onto the ramp sand bubble wrap onto the ramps as obstacles for the
children to figure out strategies to.
The children were very frustrated when their cars would get stuck on the
way down the ramps and began to utilize different strategies to get their cars
down. Some of the children tried to tilt
the ramps while others just tried pushing the cars past the obstacles with
their hands and fingers.
Some of the
children also tried to change the angles of the lower inclined gutter to see if
that would help the cars to go down the ramps easier. Since the children began exploring with the
angles of the gutters on their own, I wanted to explore this with them further in
subsequent weeks. It will be interesting
to see if the children notice the connection with the angle of the ramps and
the distance and speed of the cars moving down the ramps.
