How Do Things Stop Moving?

For the past few weeks in science class we have been talking about how things move and doing different experiments. Last week we started talking about how things stop moving. I had both sections make hypothesis about why they thought things stopped moving. This is what they came up with:

Section A: They just stop moving

Section B: No Push or Pull (which I thought was a very clever answer)

We did an experiment with sandpaper and toy cars on Tuesday. I had the students predict which piece of sandpaper the car would stop the fastest on. Both sections predicted the coarsest piece of paper. So I then introduced the word "friction" to them and explained what it meant. I did a few mini demonstrations in class. When I thought they had a good grasp of what friction was, it was time to let them ride a bike on two different surfaces to experience it for themselves. Peg was great and called a few parents for me to see if one of them could bring in their child's bicycle. Reginaldo's mom came through and brought the bike in last Thursday morning. After reviewing the term "friction" again we went outside to the concha to test out their predictions.

I gave all of my students a lengthy worksheet to complete while I called them one by one to ride the bike. I found out pretty quickly that over half my class had never ridden a bike before, which was crazy to me! So I ended up guiding most of them around in the hot sun. Needless to say I was exhausted after the first group.

Here is Valeria riding on the concrete...

One of the few from the first class who knew how to ride a bike.

Guillermo was a speed racer on the bike. Since he was one of my kids who could ride by himself I was hoping he could tell me which surface was easier to ride on. All of the kids I had to help told me the grass was easier. It was hillier so they probably felt like they were going faster, but I was definitely exerting more energy! After Guillermo got off the bike I asked him which surface was easier...

I don't know if he really knew the concrete was easier after I asked him again in Spanish, or if it was just process of elimination, but I'll go with the first :)!

In my second class more kids knew how to ride a bike, which was wonderful, but I still had to do a lot of helping...

It was really fun to be able to help a scholarship student like Katherine ride a bike for the first time. I wonder if any of them will remember that the first time they rode a bike was with Miss King in First Grade? That would make me really happy!

The kids in my second section who knew how to ride the bike had a blast!

Here's Milca peeling through the grass...

And Amanda!! This girl is a little dare devil and just went for that grass full speed. I'm glad she popped right back up :):



Most of the kids were thrilled to ride the bike. Then I had little Gian Marco who decided it was too hot and he was just going to walk the bike back, hahaha...

And here's little Andrea, the girl who reminds me so much of Theresa (my sister) when she was her age. I think they even look similar, but either way she definitely has a lot of Theresa's mannerisms.

Such a happy girl!

I always have so much fun doing hands-on activities with my kids. I wish I had endless amounts of time to plan this kind of stuff all the time.

Now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that some of this information has stuck and they'll be able to reproduce it.

Did this post make anyone else want to sing "I Want to Ride my Bicycle"?

“…nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should” –Julia Child