Monday, October 13, 2014

Movement and Angles

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.