Push And Pull Research Project
A staple of the curriculum we use in our classroom is our research projects. These research projects are great ways to integrate research and writing into our ELA block and a great way to integrate science and social studies! Our research projects also include hands-on activities! Our latest research project is our push and pull research project! We spent 2 weeks learning about the forces of push and pull! And boy did we have a blast!
Push And Pull Research Project
To introduce movement and force, we start by dancing. I mean, that only seems natural?! Right?! We did the Hokey Pokey a few times and after we “shook it all about” we brainstormed as many different kinds of movements as we could come up with!
Our second activity started with a question: Can objects move by themselves? My mustaches created cars and trucks and used their cars and trucks to answer our question.
After we voted I asked one student to move the chair. Then we discussed what happened. We quickly realized that objects cannot move by themselves. They need a force!! Then we got to be the force! Each student picked something in our classroom to move! After the moved the object we decided if we pushed or pulled the object!
The students then drew a picture in their push and pull research journal showing them moving the object.
This allowed us to learn about two types of force: push and pull. And then we created our push and pull anchor chart!
We also did a push and pull Venn Diagram to determine if items could be pushed, pulled or both!
The Great Laundry Basket Race
Once we understood push and pull, it was time to do some pushing and pulling! It was time for THE GREAT LAUNDRY BASKET RACE! The kids pair up and make some predictions on how many seconds it will take them to push and pull their friends across the carpet! People, this was beyond EPIC! The laughter…and the learning that took place was everything that learning and science should be! Just check out the video!
We ended our push and pull research project with a Kindergarten Tug-Of-War championship!!! We competed with all 8 kindergarten classes to determine the push and pull champion! And yes, our class emerged the victors!
And if you win the tug of war championship and you’re learning about push and pull, you end the week with PUSH POPS!
