Home Visits

Ms. Muehlenbein and I are preparing to schedule home visits for the week of April 22, 2013. We will be organizing home visits based on geographic area and contact you with your date and time by early next week. Our schedule will be Tuesday or Thursday full days and Wednesday morning.

How can we get a slinky to move?

    

 Exploration of Movement with Slinkys

 Over the course of the last two months the children have been learning about and representing motion through the use of Slinkys.  At the start of their exploration, Slinky play was a brand new experience for many of the them. The idea of getting a Slinky to “walk” down the stairs was not within their mind set. They were far to interested in the way the Slinky moved in their hands. With that in mind, the next few lessons were set up to showcase the various characteristics of Slinkys.

  

   In this lesson, the children were tasked using a Slinky as a paintbrush. This was designed to capture the Slinky's movements on paper. The children stretched the Slinky out across the paper and noticed how it left behind “tracks.” They used the ends of the Slinky like a stamp to create circles. When they were asked if they could make a “circle of tracks,” it challenged the way they looked at Slinkys. Bending the Slinky in specific ways was novel a idea. With a little bit of guidance and questioning, the children were able to create a “circle of tracks.”

    

 

 During the painting activity, the retracting characteristic of the Slinky proved to be a challenge to over come; the Slinky never stayed put. In the following lesson, the children stretched out Slinkys to different lengths and let them go to see what happened. They noticed that it did not matter how long or short the Slinky was stretched out, it always came back to itself. They then took a Slinky out into the hallway to stretch as far as it could go. They had expected the Slinky to return to normal, but this time it did not. They noticed if stretched to far, a Slinky will break.

 

     The Slinky's retracting characteristic is its most important aspect. In this lesson the children used a single Slinky to trace shapes made of tape on the stage. The children quickly learned they needed help from a classmate to make a shape. They did not have enough hands. To foster peer interaction, one child was shown how to work with a partner to create a shape. The child then passed on their knowledge to another who passed it on as well. Eventually, the children wanted to challenge themselves, and create a complex shape, a heart which required the use of six hands. 

     Now that the children had had multiple experiences highlighting the characteristics of a Slinky, they were inspired to rethink about Slinkys walking down stairs, by watching a few videos on Youtube. When they were presented with a small set of stairs made of blocks, the children knew right away how to get the Slinkys to walk down the stairs. A few children did however try to get a slinky to walk up the stairs because of the video seen here. They were disappointed to find out Slinkys only go down stairs and not up.