Year 2 - Week 17 - WWII Dress Up and Newton's F=ma

This week we focused our attention on World War II leaders and our dress up included some famous folks!  We also did a project for Valentine's Day involving our fine arts and then further explored Newton's Laws.  The kids had a blast with the big characters they were representing and the props they were famous for - can you tell?


Today we started our day like usual, doing our lapbooks and practicing our hand motions.

To start our time together, I had the kids work on a Valentine's day, fine art - combo project.  I took the famous works that were from artists during the Renaissance, Impressionist and Post Impressionist era's and put some valentine themed captions over them to print and cut out.  The kids then worked at sticking them on their cardstock papers and using stamps, ink, glitter and water colors, and made their own works of art.

Once they were done with this project, we moved on to exploring Newton's laws further.  This time we focused on Law #2 - F=ma.  Last week we focused our experiments on the concept of an object remaining at rest or in motion unless a force changes it.  This week we focused on understanding that an object's acceleration depends on two things: force and mass.  As the force exerted on an object increases, the acceleration increases as well.  The relationship between acceleration and mass however is just the opposite, the more mass something has, the less it will accelerate.  So our discussions, exploration and experiments were to further investigate these concepts.

The first thing we did was define our grammar for today - Force, Mass and Acceleration.  The kids were pretty familiar with the concepts from the previous week, but it was a good review and further discussion and tie-ins from the previous week were made.  

 We had each child step on a scale to weigh themselves.

We then calculated the number of "Newton's" each child was, explaining the concept to the kids.  We then figured out who had the most mass, ranking them from least to most mass.

Next we did an experiment using a bowl, ruler and two different size marbles.  We experimented to see which marble was able to move the other further, as it rolled down the ruler and struck it.  We tried it using the smaller ball hitting the larger ball and then the larger ball hitting the smaller ball.  We then  discussed the reasons for our results.  

Next, using bean bags, we had the kids pull them down the hall empty and then we added a person on the bean bag for them to drag down the hall.   They experienced the difference in mass.

When they were finished, we discussed force, mass and acceleration with this experiment.  Then we talked about what they saw and felt, while doing the experiment. This was a lot of fun for them!

Next we used a therapy swing and set up a mat.  We used "standard markers" to make sure we pulled from the same place and they hit the mat at the same place.  First they watched, as we took the empty swing and smashed it into the mat.  Of course, it barely moved.

Then we had each child come up according to their "Newton" number we gave them earlier (it just sounded cooler to say you were 6500 Newtons- instead of pounds) and they each took a turn being put into the swing.

Once in the swing, it was pulled back from two different positions -in increasing height.  They swung from the first position and they smashed into the standing mat.  They observed that most of the time, it did not move much.  The second time from the higher position, they smashed into the mat and this time, it fell down with a big bang.  As the weight of the children increased (their mass) the distance that the mat flew on the second pull-back, increased (acceleration/force).  Acceleration, force and mass were all applied to the experiment and discussed.

Then we wanted to see what would happen when we called out the big guns!  We had Mason who by far, outweighed anyone we had there by almost double!  We had the kids try to pull him in the beanbag - which took all of them....LOL!

Then we watched to see how big of a smash he would make into the mats when we released him from the two heights!  It was a dramatic shift in the mass -which changed our outcome nicely!

 To end our time together we ate a snack while we played a review game - Crocodile Dentist!  Each child was given a memory question as we went around the table.  When they answered it correctly, they did "surgery" on the crocodile to earn a point by pushing down a tooth.  If the crocodile didn't bite them (you never knew which tooth they pushed would be the one to cause his jaws to slam shut!), they kept the point.  If it slammed shut on them - they lost the point because he "ate it"!  If they didn't know the answer, then the other team could steal the point by answering correctly.

 Some friends who like to act, having fun in costume together!

It was a wonderful Wednesday!