Exploring Inclined Planes

By Nandini Bhattacharjya, Head Teacher, and Betsy Koning, Teacher

As school started last fall, we saw that the children in our Monday/Wednesday PM Twos class were captivated by rolling toy cars down ramps. This inspired us to find more ways for the children to explore similar activities with other materials.

Initially, rolling cars down ramps helped many of the children become engaged in the classroom environment—even though they were saying goodbye to their parents for the first time. Next we put out trains on inclined tracks, trucks on angled boards, and small, round redwood cones on slanting plastic rain gutters for the children to experiment with. The children were impressed to see their long trains, rows of trucks and handfuls of redwood cones rolling without needing a push. To support this interest of the group, the teachers looked around for new objects and surfaces that lent themselves to this pursuit.

As it was fall, teachers brought in miniature pumpkins and leaned gutters against a fence out in the yard. Children were fascinated to discover that the pumpkins rolled down the gutters, but only if they were placed with their stem to the side so as not to interrupt their smooth trip down the incline. Many children referred to these as “pumpkin balls,” noting the similarities between pumpkins and balls. They also realized that the larger, heavier pumpkins rolled farther.

The following week teachers set up ramps in a zigzag configuration in two sizes next to each other on the patio and provided two sizes of wiffle balls. The small balls would fit through either ramp configuration but the large balls only fit through one. This gave the children another opportunity to see how size and weight could influence an object’s progress down an inclined track. It also inspired some cooperative play as some children became the “rollers,” who sent the balls down the track, and others became the “catchers,” who trapped the balls as they came off the end of the ramp, sorted them by size and color and gave them back to the “rollers.”

Teachers also used long wooden hollow blocks to build slanted tracks for wooden trucks.

Children explored the new set-ups teachers provided each week and gained more knowledge about objects they could roll and materials they could use to build inclines. These explorations led children to build their own inclines and assign them representational meanings, such as parking ramps and freeways. Identifying the buildings as familiar structures encountered in every day life also brought elements of pretend play to these activities.

This in-depth exploration of inclined planes lasted throughout the autumn quarter and made the afternoons in the Twos exciting and engaging.