Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Force, Motion and Energy Oh My!


Hello Science Friends, 
So much has been cooking in our Kindergarten Science Lab! We had so much fun today that we had to share this with you. We played Kick the can and made some ice cream today and we learned a lot along the way. 
We started with our basic ice cream ingredients that were well chilled. 

We set up our equipment. 

In goes the milk.

In goes the cream and then the sugar. And our secret mystery ingredient. 

In goes the ice and rock salt in layers. Be sure to tape your lid shut! Be sure and tape both of them! 


Get your 20 favorite Kinder friends, turn on some music and pass the can. We just were not brave enough to kick it! 

Figure out different ways we can keep the can moving! 

We noticed some changes... Our can is getting colder actually very cold to the touch and frost is starting to develop on the can. We also notice when we keep the can moving the frost is not seen and the can is wet. We also notice the mixture inside the can feels different when it moves and the ice feels different too! 

We noticed that it was getting difficult to push the can and get it across our circle. We decided to try the table instead. We noticed that the can rolled better on the surface of the table. Hmmm, could that be some friction? 

We had to take a peak and see if all this shake, rattle and roll was really working after ten minutes. We discovered it really was working but we still had more work to do. 

So, did you believe we could pull this off? We had no doubts we could do it. So what did we learn? 


This was one part of our Investigation of Force, Motion and Energy. Children learned that energy, force and motion are related and part of our everyday life. Children observed and described the ways the can could and could not move such as: 
Straight
Zig Zag
Up
Down 
Back and Forth
Round and Round
Fast 
Slow
We observed starting and ending positions with our can. We noticed that the movement changed as the ice cream changed inside our can. We noticed that different surfaces allowed us to move the can differently. We observed ways our can could move and we used position and location terms to describe our object's movement. We  learned we can Notebook about our investigations that we have explored with our senses. And we have learned that we can communicate just like real scientists. And we have learned that sometimes our investigations lead to more questions and we are HUNGRY for those answers which leads us to more investigations! I hope you join us for more fun as we investigate, discover and explore in Kindergarten. 

4 comments:

  1. You have lucky students! This is great
    - Lisa from ateachersbagoftricks.blogspot.com

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  2. Love your blog. I just awarded you the Liebster Blog Award. You can check it out at my blog.
    www.firstgradeshenanigans.blogspot.com

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  3. Where can I find the ingredient list? I would love yo do this with my first graders. :)

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  4. I plan to do this lesson on Thursday with my first graders! Where can I get EXACT directions of ingredients, how much, and what to do? This is great!!!! gerilynn.harris@kenton.kyschools.us

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