Ramps

R never fails to surprise me. I saw this on a post by Inspiration Laboratories about experiments and thought that it sounded interesting but that R wouldn’t engage with it at all.

The post included several simple science experiments that you can do with a pre-schooler. This particular idea explores cause and effect by creating ramps and putting things down them to see what happens. It appealed to me because it’s not messy and you don’t need anything new for it – just whatever you have that you can use as a ramp.

Despite my pessimism I thought we’d give it a go one afternoon and we used train tracks, lego and a toy box to create ramps.

We made a series of ramps out of train tracks at different heights. I found this trickier than expected – they kept falling over – but eventually we succeeded and we then put trains down the track and toy animals at various points on the track to see whether they would be moved along or knocked over.

R absolutely loved this. He was fascinated by what would happen and we spent around 40 minutes (a seriously long time for R to engage with the same activity – I think only recycling has beaten it) doing this.

I like the suggestions on the original blog to try varying this with different textures eg sandpaper and to do this on top of a box so the toy/toys fall off the box like dominoes. So watch this space for more ramp experimentation!

We tried starting with a shorter ramp but R was insistent that it had to be tall. The elephant was the first animal to be part of the experiment.

A series of different ramps.

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Seeing what happens with a train engine and a carriage.

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And finally…putting a ramp on both sides of the toy box

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