Today was a busy day!
In addition to our typical daily activities and some garden preparation work, we took a walk to campus and found two hills on which to run. We have noticed that the children have tried to climb hills on past walks, so today they had a chance to explore hills more purposefully.
There were two hills:
- The first hill was steeper, but not as long.
- The second hill was more gradual, but longer. There were also spinner seed pods on that hill and it was next to the clock tower.
We walked to the first hill and ran up and down. Some children played “red light green light” on the hill.
Then, we walked to the second hill and ran up and down. Some children looked at the clock and it chimed for us! Other children tossed spinner seed pods in the air and watched them twirl down. Some children even rolled on this hill.
Then, we walked back to our school by taking a “long cut.” We went past the first hill again to remember what it was like.
When we got back to the room, we asked the children to vote on whether they liked hill #1 (the first hill) or hill #2 (the hill by the clock). The second hill won with 15 votes. 7 children voted for the first hill. The reasons for their votes were interesting.
Some of the children who voted for the first hill said they liked it better because:
- It was steeper.
- They played red light, green light there.
- It made them run fast.
- The other hill made him too slow, so they liked this one better.
NOTE: One child did not like the first hill because he fell when he ran on it.
The children who voted for the second hill shared less about this hill, but still shared a few things:
- There was a clock.
- The grass was too wet on the first hill, so they liked this one better.
The children immediately knew that there were more votes for the second hill because the list was longer. We talked about how there were “more than twice as many votes for the second hill!” Note that some children did vote twice. 🙂
Here are some of the questions that come up from this:
- Did children feel a need to “justify” their responses for liking the first hill because there were fewer votes for it? There was more talk about why they liked the first hill better. Or… was it just the group of children who liked the first hill better? Do they just want to share more than the other group?
- Did more of the children like the second hill more because it was the second hill they visited and they were more comfortable exploring the second hill after practicing on the first hill?
- Did more of the children like the second hill more because of the clock tower and the seed pods?
- Did their choices really have to do with the speed they ran due to the slope of the hill?
- Why did some children vote for a hill because they didn’t like the other hill? In these cases, it seemed less about liking the hill for which they voted and more about NOT choosing the hill they did NOT like.
Next week we are walking on Tuesday. We plan to start on the second hill and end with the first hill to see if it changes the results. This is non-scientific, of course. There are different children on Tuesdays and Mondays and some of this could just be the factor of the children.
We also noticed that the children are playing with inclines in our own classroom and outdoor areas in the building areas we provide for them. Is this the beginning of an investigation of hills, slopes, inclined planes, ramps, etc…?