Sid the Science Kid has an amazing episode featuring simple machines. Sid is a child attending a small Montessori like school. Check out this video clip from the show singing a song about the inclined plane. This show is amazing and they also have complete lesson plans for all of the hands on experiments they do on the show for small children.
We checked out our Gears set.
Marble run is an amazing set for discovering motion and gravity.
We found two amazing old factory pulleys at a flea market. We attached one to Xander's play structure, so he could haul up toys and sand into his tree house.
We played with our antique yarn spinner. A beautiful example of an early machine.
We took a look at our trucks and toys with simple cranes. Playmobil is wonderful, and has many fully functional mechanisms for kids to discover.
We checked out things like our clothes line, bicycle chains and gears.We also have a fantastic K'nex set for building simple machines.
We visit LOTS of Museums and Science Centres, and it's amazing how much there is to discover.
Simple machines are all around us.
So exciting!
So exciting!
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Ack! The "gears" are in the back of my car ready to donate. We didn't understand them. This http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Gears-Boogie-Motorized/dp/B000KLSV8M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325911170&sr=8-1 is the set we were given. I had not idea there was a non-motorized option. It was so complicated and annoying we never looked at it again! Digging it out of the donate bin...
ReplyDeleteDig it out for sure!! I would get a basic set thought. We started with one building plate, the crank, and a few Gears. Once Xander (and now Ava) understood how the Gears worked we went into other more complicated configurations. There is a booklet to show some designs work. We store all of our developmental toys of this sort in bins at a height for easy access. They take down one box at a time and build ...most often together now.
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