What are ramps anyways?

We started the week off with a roll, slide, topple and drop. Our science core curriculum led to an exploration of ramps.... what are ramps anyways?

And course in order to have a ramp, you need to build one :)
They about DIED when they heard the SuperMario Bros Theme song come on! We matched our movement to the beat, mimicked picking up heavy wood and nailing in the pieces together. Once the ramp was built we could explore it!

First was going down ramps. As we slid, rolled and pushed from high levels of space down to low levels, we learned about the direction of ramps (from high to low), as well as movement down a ramp. Then we went up ramps. This was much harder and required more pushing and pulling as we traveled from low levels of space up to high levels. We know ramps inside and out!

But what if we didn't have ramps?

My creative Kindergarteners came up with some viable alternatives: slides, ladders, stairs, poles, elevators and jumping really high (love that last one ;)

Now that we knew what ramps were and how important they are in getting to and from places or delivering objects, we conducted an experiment to learn how some objects would go down a ramp, or if they could go down at all. Running around crazy fast, groups of students selected an object from the classroom that we wanted to experiment with, and I brought some from home. Then from one side of the room to the other, we used dance to predict and express how objects, such as ribbon, a cube, a pencil and a washcloth, would travel down a ramp.

We were tired after those trial runs with each object and used our experiment to test our knowledge and predict what objects could go down ramps and how they would travel. By the time we finally collapsed on the carpet for the concluding activity, they were tired but bright eyed and bright minded.

We ended class with a favorite of mine, This Too Shall Pass by Ok Go and each time the kids saw a ramp they raised their hand.

This video really brought everything together into an awesome chain reaction that had the kids jaw-dropped and staring for the. whole. video. #WIN! Be sure to check it out!