Discovering Motion!

We just finished up our science unit on force and motion in room 413. What a fun UBD unit this was to cover because of the endless opportunities to use hands-on activities and experiments to supplement my direct instruction. The children were also able to bring so much information to the table from the start as well because they LOVE to experiment with gravity (throwing and dropping things...sigh) and pushing and pulling everything (and sometimes everyONE).

We began our unit by making a sorting chart of things that move with a push and things that move with a pull. In order to be successful with this group activity, we first read Move It: motion, forces, and you, a FABULOUS informational text geared towards young elementary students. We did read this book over a few days, reading "chapters" that were essential for our lessons of the day. I then provided physical examples of many of the sorting items (toy cars, soccer ball etc.) so that we could ensure our categorizing was correct.

Here's our final chart! We did this as a whole group activity and each pair of children received one picture that they examined, discussed, and placed on the chart based on a agreed upon category. The object in the middle is a Yo-Yo... they discovered (with some help) that we need to push the yo-yo down and then pull it up quickly to make it move properly.

During activity time for our "have-to" station, the kiddos worked one-on-one with me to discover their misconceptions about the motions of push and pull and to sort common items into their appropriate category. I found this activity to be very helpful for finding the kiddos that still needed some scaffolding and hands-on experience to understand the difference between a push and pull.

At the end of our unit, we did two day "discovery centers" with force and motion exploratory activities. The students used a simple recording sheet with a box labeled with a picture matching the pictures on the large signs at each of the centers. Part of the pre-teaching for this activity included a posted (with magnetic word strips) word wall of words they may want to use while recording their results at each center. The students were told to record, with drawings and words, their findings at each of the discovery centers. This was by far their favorite activity of the whole unit! 

Discovery Centers!

We're so excited about the spinning station! This was also great fine motor practice, the spinning motion was difficult for them to create!

Measuring the distance traveled after rolling down a steep ramp. We tested flat rolling as well as different heights of the ramps and recorded our results!

Here's the gravity station; we used balls of different sizes and compositions and recorded how fast they fell and noticed the speeds.

By far the favorite of the stations: friction! The kids went crazy here ! (quite literally.....) They tested whether it was easier to push a friend on the smooth tiling or the bumpy rough rug and with one friends force or two. 

Here's our UBD bulletin board to showcase all of our hard work over the entire unit!