"What about the giant hill?" - Investigating ramps outside
As the children have been gaining more experience using the ramps indoors, they have also noticed there are ramps on our playground. During this activity the children were encouraged to find and test out ramps they could find outside. They found ramps in many areas of the playground on the hill, the tree stumps and even on the play structures.
"No it doesn't roll."
The children tried using different materials to roll on each of the surfaces they found. At first some of the materials such as the tape roll didn't seem to work, but when they tried the ball they noticed it worked and rolled down the tree stump.
"What about the giant hill? Maybe that's a ramp?"
The children moved over to the hill next. They noticed that some of the materials they used to roll down the hill would move slower. "The tape doesn't go very fast!" They talked about how some of these materials, even the ball needed to be pushed in order to be able to roll and make it all the way to the bottom of the hill.
"Hey why don't we go to the slide, it look s like a ramp."
One of the children suggested using the double slide. The child said, "Hey, Let's try this!" The children climbed to the top of the slide and dropped their materials down. One of the children used the ball to test how fast it would go down, "Whoa! That goes fast!" Ms. Tara suggested that the children try to roll the ball up the slide. A child tried this and told Ms. Tara, "It doesn't work, it just rolls back down."
"Let's try the dragon. Look! Watch! It is!"
After testing the slide the children found the dragon nearby. "Maybe that dragon thing will work. It works!" They tested this to see if it would also act like a ramp, to which they found out it did.
After exploring outside the children noticed there was a difference between rolling the balls on a smooth surface like the slide and dragon compared to the bumpy surface of the grass. We then decided to focus on using different textures on the ramps to see how the surface of the ramp affects the movement and speed of the ball on its way down.
