Sharing What We Learned About Forces

This week, Grade 1s became busy with planning a way to show what they understand about how things move and what forces make objects move. As they would want to make the sharing a fun and engaging one, Grade 1s will come up with simple games that will help them easily relay what forces are around us. They worked in groups of 3 and brainstormed game choices that they can make. They chose the ones that are easy to make and easy to understand and play too. They gave their games a title, they drew how they expect it to look like and listed the materials that they will need to create it. They are working on the game and hopefully they will be done by next week so they can invite other grade levels to visit our classroom and try their games.

Forces and Motion

Gravity is the force that all Grade 1s are familiar with. They do understand that it is a force that pulls everything towards the ground. This week, we explored what a force is and what other types of forces are there through experiments and videos we watched. The first experiment they did was on Air resistance. They compared the movement of two sheets of paper when they dropped them to the floor, one flat sheet and one crumpled paper, and the paper on top of a book. These are their findings: the two flat sheets of paper reached the floor almost at the same time; the flat sheet of paper reached the floor slower than the crumpled paper; and the paper on top of the book stayed on top of the book when they dropped both the book and the paper to the floor.

The second experiment was on Buoyancy. During the pre-experiment, they gave a good guess about objects that will sink or float on to the water. After guessing, they dropped the following objects - paper clip, coin, dried leaf, plastic straw and toothpick - to the water.

The third experiment was on Magnetism. The Grade 1s were all given magnets. They were asked to find out which objects stick on to the magnets and which ones don't.

The last experiment was on Friction. The Grade 1s explored where the the toy truck will roll the slowest: on a baking paper, on an aluminum foil, a bubble wrap or a rubber mat?

It was a fun week indeed, and curiosity is ignited. Next we will explore further the different kinds of forces and then connect them to the simple and complex machines we commonly use daily.

Simple Machines

This week, Grade 1s explored the different simple machines. At first, Grade 1s idea of machines are the usual big machines that we commonly use such as cars, machines with cranes, household appliances and others. They were all in awe to know that a simple zipper or a jar lid is a machine. To further feed their curiosity, Grade 1s worked in groups and explored the different simple machines. They searched on one machine of their choice, find out what it is, how it looks like and examples of them around us. They shared the information they collected through a poster and they explained their work to their classmates.

Then we began finding out what makes objects move. The whole class are familiar with gravity. Most of them know how gravity works and what benefits it gives us. Next week, we will conduct a series of experiments to introduce what other forces are present aside from gravity.

Exploring Machines

This week, Grade 1s looked into the topic machines. Together they tried to unpack what machines are and what machines are not. They worked in groups to give examples of machines as well as example sof not machines. Then they were further invited to spark tehir curiosity by doing a gallery walk and writing their names on the paper to indicate whether they agree or disagree that the given examples are machines.

The week concluded with a simple research of the basic simple machines: pulley, lever, inclined plane, screw, wheel and axle and wedge.

Next week, we will expand our exploration by looking at how the simple machines work and how they make work easier to do.