Kindergarten Scientists

What is motion?

What makes things move?

How do pushes and pulls affect the motion of an object?

These are just some of the questions that Kindergarteners are exploring at Coleytown!

In this science unit, Kindergarten students are developing common vocabulary, asking
questions and deepening their understanding about how objects move when forces and
interactions between objects are applied. Students are investigating and measuring how
an object’s movement is impacted by the relative strength or direction of pushing and pulling.

What does this look like in the classrooms?

Last week, all of the Kindergarten classes came together in the gymnasium to explore the

guiding question:

What happens when you use harder and softer pushes to move things?  

The gym set up for the investigation.

Students took turns rolling balls using different amounts of force. Students investigated how

changes in force caused the balls to move different distances.  They tracked this data and then
analyzed it as a group.

Check out some pictures below!

Ms. Roesler collecting class data.

Students getting ready to push the balls in the gym.

Students watching their "pushes."

Students observed patterns of motion and used these patterns as evidence of the effects
of different strengths of pushes on the motion of an object.

This week, the Kindergarten students are exploring the question:

How can you make something move without touching it?

Today, students in Ms. Deering’s class experimented with moving a marble along a foam

track.  Their challenge was to make the marble move without touching it at all! Students

discovered that by lifting the track, they could make the marble move different distances.

Summary table of experiments

Two students changing the height of the track.

Students experimenting on the track.

Questions to ask your children:

Was there a difference in how the marble moved at the different heights?
Why do you think the marble moved differently each time?

And that's how Kindergarteners at Coleytown roll...