Santa's Big Race!

In our last week of school we just had to squeeze in some Science Fun! We got busy talking finishing up our unit on Force, Motion and Energy! In order to learn about movement we were using wind up toys and pull cars.

We used Duplos to build the lanes needed for Santa's Big Race! We predicted which car would win and charted those predictions. We did the same for the wind up toys. It seems that Santa was a favorite this year even though our elf had the coolest car around! 

We started our races and as you can imagine... we had tons of fun. I suppose the picture here is worth a 1000 words because Santa and friends were moving pretty darn fast. 

We moved on to our wind up toys and set up our races. And as you can imagine our wind up toy race was pretty slow but still very exciting. Santa came out a clear winner above all! 

It sure was fun to hear our race announcers use our Merry Okee with an elf voice! 

We had a good time. We learned a lot and this gave us a fun Science Notebooking Activity. 

So, what did we learn? 

We predicted an objects movement and tested our predictions. 

We observed starting and ending positions and described how they changed.

We observed ways objects can move and used appropriate language to describe an objects movement. 

We recorded our observations and used that information to discuss results with each other. 

We set up our own investigation and discussed how we could change the investigation and explored different ways for our next investigation. 

We had so much fun and laughed so hard our sides were hurting. So, who said Science was not fun? It sure wasn't me, just sayin'! 

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.