The children have been very
interested in the movement of cars as they travel down ramps in the
classroom. We have found different ways
to manipulate the ramps so they are at different heights and have different
textures on the actual ramp. We began to
change the surface at the bottom of the ramp.
We wanted to see if the children made the connection between the bottom
surface and the distance the cars traveled – looking to see how friction
impacted the distance of the cars.
We used two ramps and changed the
surfaces under each ramp. Under the first
ramp, we added a shiny, smooth mirror.
Under the second ramp, we added several thick carpet squares. We knew the surfaces would elicit different responses
from the cars as they reached the bottom so we were curious to see if the
children noticed.
The children
noticed immediately. They could not
right away verbalize what they saw but pointed, laughed, and smiled as their
cars traveled down the ramp with the smooth mirror at the bottom. Later in the
week, the children were using words like “fast” and “go” to describe their
cars. Responses from the ramp with the
carpet included looks of confusion, and children pushing their cars down with
more force to see if they could get their cars to go further. It was interesting to see that some of the
children connected force to distance right away while others took a little longer
to figure out effective strategies.
We will be
continuing this with the children, manipulating the ramps with different bottom
surfaces again. We want the children to
continue drawing comparisons and contrasting the textures and how they relate
to the distance the cars travel.
