After about a month, it looks like we have wrapped up our block exploration. We've stayed busy and have learned so much! This all started when the kids wanted to learn about skyscrapers. We built a lot of skyscrapers that week with all different types of blocks found in our room. From skyscrapers we ended up taking a closer look at blocks by measuring and comparing sizes and shapes. We also spent some time in the exploration of mazes (which may have been my favorite!). I was amazed at some of the mazes they built. All of that led to us to this week, our exploration of ramps!
Before we started with our ramps, we had the 100th day of school on Monday. Michelle and I have been looking for a number line for the classroom for months now! We haven't been able to luck up on one we liked, so Michelle had the genius idea of us making our own...and why not do that on the 100th day of school (1-100). I was a little curious to see how this would go. I had some other ramp stuff planned for that day and did NOT expect it to last the whole morning! But it did. And the kids got so into it! We made the numbers up ahead of time and then hid them all over the room. We let the kids go on a search for them around the classroom. After they were all found, we met back together and talked about the numbers. We discussed the general placement of the numbers and compared "greater than" and "less than". From there we put them in order on the floor from 1-100. This thing wrapped half way across the room! Someone would call out which number would come next and we'd place it in it's spot on the carpet. This ended up being a very productive morning. We were able to take time to discuss each number and talk about it's placement (no wonder it took us all morning!). There was a lot of screaming and squealing and then a huge cheer of accomplishment once we made it to 100 - hooray!
Now to the really fun part of our week, ramps! To start, we had some discussions about ramps...what were they, why are they shaped the way that they are, where do we see them in our world, what would roll down a ramp? After some time exploring these questions, we laid 4 different types of balls in the middle of the carpet...a tennis ball, a football, a plastic ball, and a marble. We split the class into groups and they each picked a ball. They went into their groups and explored each ball, then gave us 3 facts about it. This got us talking about the way balls bounce. We decided to test out which ball would bounce the highest. We took predictions beforehand and wrote them out on a chart. Then, we went out into the hallway to test out our predictions. We made a mark on the wall and then had the kids drop each of the balls from that same height. We discussed the importance of not throwing it down...we wanted our results to be as accurate as possible so we each did a simple drop. After each drop we marked the wall with the highest bounce point and finally discovered that the marble bounced back the highest! We marked our findings on our chart. It's hanging in the hallway if you'd like to check it out.
Next, we wanted to see which ball would roll the fastest down a ramp. We decided to use the big ramp in the school (leading to the synagogue). To start, we made more predictions and charted them. We decided the best way to test this would be to have 3 races. We started by calling 2 kids to the top of the ramp and they each chose one ball of their choice...the race of the tennis ball vs the marble! The marble won. The next race was the football vs the plastic ball. The football won (to my surprise). Our final race would be between the winners...football vs marble. Before I disclose the results, I want to paint a little picture in your head. We had all the kids lined up down one side of the ramp for viewing, and 2 kids at the top with a ball in their hands. There was jumping and chanting and screaming and cheering...I felt like we had transported ourselves into a NASCAR race. It was hilarious to say the least. We all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves :) We lined the balls on the starting line and discovered that the marble was definitely the fastest!
To wrap up our week, we made our own ramps. We reviewed the basic design of ramps before starting, and then let the kids work with a partner of their choice. We provided them with different materials such as boxes, egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, straws, and popsicle sticks. They were able to work with their partner and the materials to build any type of ramp that they wanted to. To my surprise, the kids worked hard on these ramps for well over an hour! They even chose to keep working on them instead of play with legos (this is a big deal!). They worked beautifully together and got so creative. We used different types of tape and glue to hold everything together. Many of them were full of obstacles with several different pathways. The kids did everything on their own...check them out in the hallway if you get a chance. The kids wrote their names on paper to label them. After we constructed our ramps, we used marbles to see how they worked. Some partners found out that their ramps needed to be tweaked after experimenting with the marble. It was a lot of trial and error, but so much fun! They are so proud of their work...as they should be!
Approaches to Learning:
- Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
- Demonstrate growing initiative in selecting and carrying out activities.
- Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
- Understand a task can be accomplished through several steps.
- Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
- Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
- Respond respectfully to positive and negative feedback from adults most of the time.
- Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.
- Use classroom materials responsibility, most of the time.
- Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
- Distinguish between descriptions of story events and spoken words of characters.
- Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
- Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
- Incorporate favorite parts of literary texts into play activities.
- Explore books independently.
- Investigate solutions to simple problems.
- Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
- Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
- Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
- Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
- Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.
Working on our number line...
Comparing the bounce of the 4 balls...
Our ramp races!...
Constructing our ramps...
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