Monthly Archives: October 2016

Ramp Play

Children in every classroom have been deeply engaged in the physical sciences and engineering through use of ramps. We’ve found that large groups of children have designed, solved problems and worked together for extended periods of time every day when ramps are available. For some, ramps are spontaneously designed as part of a block construction or city scene. This exploratory stage is an important one, and gives teachers ideas about the kinds of questions or problems we might pose to children as they play. First by joining play, describing what we see, and posing informal challenges, and then later by proposing specific problems for children to consider, we encourage children to form hypothesis, make predictions, observe, and reflect, and connect experiences to deepen knowledge.

To quote Betty Zan’s Article, Physics in Preschool? (https://www.communityplaythings.com/…/teaching-stem-with-ra…)
“Classroom activities such as these engage children in actively exploring their environments, making sense of them, and using what they learn to design things. Although to a casual observer, these experiences may look like mere child’s play, to a knowledgeable early childhood educator, they are rich learning experiences. Children are learning how to engage in important scientific and engineering practices, such as how to ask questions and pursue the answers, identify and solve an engineering problem, plan and carry out an investigation, make close observations, construct explanations based on evidence, and communicate their conclusions with others. They are also engaging with important science concepts, such as cause and effect (when I make the ramp higher, the marble rolls faster), patterns (when I alternate the direction of the blocks, the base of the ramp is more stable), systems (when I move one segment of the ramp, it affects the entire structure), and energy (the heavier marble will knock down a block at the end of the ramp, but a lighter marble just bounces off). ”

To support this play, we connect ramp play to other materials which with objects are in motion – for example, marble painting, water play, using scarves, small parachutes or streamers in the wind, etc. And we connect our discussions of ramps to some good reasons to use them in design. For example, our school ramp makes it possible for someone in a wheelchair to access our space, and in block play a good ramp system can assure that our dolls that use wheelchairs have access too. And if children are designing a harbor system we have to find a way for boats to move off the trucks or cars that carry them so that they can access the water.

Right now there are extensive investigations of ramp systems and velocity among some of our older students, who spend long periods of time, often in teams of 2, experimenting and discovering. The interest in ramps for these children began when children took materials from a sink and float experiment and began using them in different ways. They used a Styrofoam container and a marble to roll the marble back and forth and were very interested in how the marble moved. They noticed that they could rock the Styrofoam to make the marble move slower or faster. When ramps were introduced, children were encouraged to make predictions and hypothesis about how the marbles would move down the ramps. They have been working on ways to change the angles of the ramps they use in their designs to see what would happen. A next step was to create traps for the marbles to get caught in.

We know that this rich play is only beginning, and will take different forms over the course of our year together. We’ll continue to observe, ask questions, pose challenges for the children, and offer a wide range of materials, including materials with which to create new ramp systems, so that this deep engagement in understanding how things work continues.

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Connections and Curriculum

As we start our school year together in a classroom of very young children that we don’t know well yet, we are looking for interests everyone shares that can give shape to our developing curriculum and can help children make connections across many experiences. We want to encourage children to engage with materials and learn more about how to use classroom tools and media and we hope that children will begin to connect socially at the same time – talking together, helping each other find what’s needed, sharing ideas and experiences, and beginning to notice the things children have in common as well as the differences in approach or experience that we can all learn from and appreciate.

Teachers often think about very open-ended themes or projects to get his process started – looking at the environment, thinking about color, making a mark, telling stories all offer beginnings that can unfold in multiple ways over time.

An example this year has been color as an organizing idea around the classroom. We began by encouraging children to use primary colors at the easel and at collage as we introduced these classroom spaces to the children. When we used glue at collage with a variety of colorful circles, would children notice colors? Sort colors? When children created their first paintings, would they keep primary colors “clean” or would they begin mixing experiments right away? Would line or filling a whole page be the primary interest or would color be an organizer? When we introduced children to classroom puzzles or color cubes what could we observe about the children’s understanding of and thinking about color as they constructed? Our observations inform decisions about experiences to offer next, and help us understand how children are thinking about the experiences we share, even when they might not be ready to tell us much about their ideas yet.

Right from the beginning of our year, we’ve had children very interested in using color as an organizer as they sort, create patterns and construct. We’ve had children interested in naming (labeling) colors And we’ve had many children mixing, experimenting, and investigating the multiple shades that can be created when colors are combined. With these approaches and interests in mind, we could offer a wider variety of classroom experiences that we knew would be engaging and offer rich opportunities for the children to connect.

At the easels, we’ve encouraged children to focus their interest in shades of color by changing the color combinations offered. One week might focus on yellows and blues so that a variety of greens could be easily created. Another week might focus on yellows and reds, or reds and blues. When the primary colors returned, we observed a more purposeful investigation of color mixing, and the conversations about shades of color have engaged more and more children. At our weekly paper day, when children share work with classmates before it travels home, many children describe the ways they thought about color to create as they painted.

We offered a variety of books that feature color, so that conversations could continue in a new way. Books featuring fall leaves, and books like Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh or Mix It Up by Herve Tullet have been read and re-read often. Mouse Paint became so important to the children that we decided to extend its themes into our first fingertip and hand painting experiences and for collaborative retelling and drama experiences.

When we were ready to cook our first recipe using tomatoes, we made sure that we investigated many kinds of tomatoes – with different colors as well as sizes. We used these investigations to introduce documentation to the children, encouraging them to talk about, observe carefully, and then draw the varieties they were interested in.

At the science table, we’ve been mixing colors in muffin tins filled with water. Primary watercolors are in 3 of the tins, and children used a pipette to move colors in and out of the water, so that they can create a variety of shades and colors. Including transparent color viewers, mixing tools, and seasonal vegetables at the table enriches the conversation about shades of color, mixing color, and seasonal changes. A favorite activity is to take a viewer and look at the classroom and classmates through yellow, or blue, or red.

And now that the leaves are changing, we are well prepared to look for color in nature. We’ve offered a bed of leaves for pretend woodland animals to shelter in on one of our side tables, encourage children to look up and out of our classroom window often to notice the changes outdoors, and are beginning to investigate changes outdoors as well.

This is one example of how in a busy classroom informed by child interest one thing leads naturally to another. The same process is unfolding in storytelling, making a mark, looking at the environment, thinking about letters and words, and in many other rich investigations that are on-going every day.

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