When you remove the card (quickly-- flicking it forward works much better than pulling it out, for your information), the pennies stay in place . . . until gravity pulls them down into the cup. One basic, concrete example of the concept of inertia: an object at rest tends to stay at rest (until acted on by a force).
It's such a simple idea, but they kept doing this one (and asking me to do it) over and over again, long after lesson time was done.
We also made a stack of pennies and pushed a single penny across the table into it, replacing the bottom coin. This one did not work every time, but it worked at least half of the times we tried it, which is pretty good in my book.
Being a bit of a worrier, I drew the line at trying to pull a tablecloth out from under a table full of dishes. If I could have gotten it down, it would have been pretty impressive. Maybe next time we talk about Newton's laws. :)
Many of my favorite ideas for our studies (some that we used and some that we didn't) came from E is for Explore!. I strongly suggest checking out what they have compiled.
Continuing on to the flip side of Newton's First Law-- objects in motion tend to remain in motion-- I added in a discussion of friction, which gave us the opportunity to play with an air puck aka a hovercraft! We made ours from the materials that came in our Physics kit, but there is a great how-to on Scribbit to make one using common household materials.
To start out, I hid the balloon and tapped the puck, moving it across the table to show the children how far it would go. Then we built the hovercraft and let it float across the tabletop to see how much farther it would go with a cushion of air underneath. I asked the kids why the distances the puck travelled were so different. It took some thinking, but they figured out that the puck rubbed on the table and that slowed it down. Then, we all rubbed our hands together quickly to see how the heat builds up and lets us know there is friction between them.
For a little fun at the end of the day, we also watched The Magic School Bus Plays Ball on youtube, which has a great discussion of friction and force as well.
I was so tempted to run right out and buy a kids' air hockey table to go along with our discussion, but that did seem a little overboard. The kiddoes used our air puck on the kitchen table in the same way, but bumpers would have been a great addition! They batted it back and forth from one end of the table to the other until all the air was gone, then blew it back up and started again!
Most of what we did this week was so simple, which proved to be a big part of what made it all work so well. The kids were fascinated to see everyday items used in ways that seem magical and amazing. And not only could they watch the magic, but they could actually DO the magic themselves. Based on the entries in their journals afterwards, they even understood WHY the magic was working. Watching learning happen right before my eyes is my favorite kind of magic. ;)
--Little Miss Crazy
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