Kindergartners have explored many ways in which forces can interact with other objects in both science and engineering.  They have observed forces from different heights and how weight can affect the force something has on another object.

 As a culminating project in the Force and Motion unit in Engineering, they built their own technologies to interact with a "crash box."  Their technologies represented the three little pigs from our story (The Three Little Pigs' Sledding Adventure) and each "crash box" represented someone from the Big Bad Wolf's family.  Each crash box had a different material inside, and their goal was to get the "crash box" to move!  Students were able to change their technologies in any way they wanted.  Would they make them lighter?  Heavier?  Launch them from a taller height?  A shorter height?

Kindergartners are nearing the end of their force and motion unit.  Connecting engineering to literacy, we read The Three Little Pigs' Sledding Adventure!


In a funny tale where the three little pigs design and build their own sleds, they quickly see the effects when they change the weight of their sleds.  Will a sled of straw make it down the snow hill?  How about a heavier sled of sticks?  And what about a sled of bricks?  How far will that one go?

The problem comes in when the big, bad wolf is waiting for them at the end of the sledding hill!  How can we connect what we've learned about the weight of cars and how they crash into the crash box?  Only Kindergartners will know!  ;-)

Now that Kindergartners have gathered evidence to support a claim that higher ramps push the crash box farther, they're seeing what happens when the ramp height stays the same and the weight of the car changes.  Do heavier cars push the crash box farther?  Or do lighter cars?

Using washers as weights, Kindergartners did a fair test exploring the question:  How does the weight of a car affect the distance a crash box travels?  They continue to collect data to support their argument!

Check out the data table we completed as a class!

Kindergarten is continuing to work on their data collection techniques, as engineers and scientists must use math in their work!

This week, Kindergartners will work on measuring and recording the distance a crash box travels when a car bumps into it from different heights.  Will the crash box go farther with a higher ramp?  How can we gather evidence to support our claim that it will?  

We'll be designing an investigation to help us do just this!  Below are pictures from our experiment!  Way to go Kindergartners!

Now that Kindergartners have explored cars and ramps (changing the type of car and the height of the ramp), they are learning to collect data and represent it graphically.

Students are changing the ramp height and using a non-standard unit of measurement to record how far their car goes at various heights. Do we have evidence that shows us that a higher ramp height causes a car to go a farther distance?  

Continuing to learn about force and motion, Kindergartners have discovered that the greater the height of their ramp, the farther their cars go!  

Today they were introduced to the "Crash Box," a box filled with some sort of object in it, like a blown up balloon, a bunch of bolts, or some yarn scraps.  One box is also just filled with air (although some students claim it's empty). Letting their cars go down their ramps, they made observations about what happened to the crash boxes. 

 Some crash boxes went farther than others.  Kindergartners continue to ask "Why?!?!"  

Now that they're experts at identifying types of motion, Kindergartners are learning more about force and motion with the use of cars and ramps.  They're spending time making observations between various cars and ramps to see what happens when they change the height of the ramp, the type of ramp, and the type of car used.  Way to go Kindergarten!

With a greater understanding of how technologies can move, Kindergartners are putting their knowledge to the test!  

Over winter break, Mrs. Brinza's friend Sally called her.  Sally was bored and asked Mrs. Brinza for a favor from her Kindergarten engineers.  Because engineers design for both needs and wants, Mrs. Brinza said, "Of course!"

Kindergartners' next design project is building a playground from everyday materials.  One requirement is that part of their playground moves, while another part remains stationary.  Kindergartners are testing their playground equipment as they design it to make sure that it works. They are thinking about the properties of different materials and how they could be useful in their designs.  Hats off to Kindergarten!  

In our next unit, Kindergartners will be exploring how forces can affect different objects!  They'll also be connecting everything they've learned so far, including the idea that engineers design technologies for needs and for wants.

In the pictures above, Kindergartners are exploring different objects and whether they move or stay stationary when a force is added.  We've officially designed a force as a push or a pull, and most times, a strong enough force will cause something to move.  But sometimes, a force isn't big enough to move something, and it stays stationary!