Thoughts From: What's My Speed?

Putting social studies on the back burner for a couple of weeks, we are diving head first into science!!

Force and motion to be more specific. One thing I've noticed about fourth grade, and most other levels of the education of students, is that they L-O-V-E science! And my LBKs love them some science! (I hope I can keep this feeling goin' all year...)

In the beginning stages of this unit we talk a little bit about speed. So...yet another impromptu project. This time it's in science. --I've got a feeling we're going to be doing a lot of impromptu this year.--

We took some notes...and more notes...and then just a few more notes. By this point I was b-ored!! The LBKs checked out about 15 minutes ago. I think I did too but it just took me a little longer to realize it...

So we are talking about speed and discussing how fast a car travels in kilometers per second...and then the little light bulb in my went off. Mr. Bulb said, "Why don't we actually measure speed instead of just talking about measuring it?"

"Great idea Mr. Bulb!" I said. (One day I'm going to say that out loud and then my kids will think I'm crazy...ummm, I think they already do.)

So off I ran to my ~~on it's last leg~~ trusty computer and sent out a message, "Help, I need some stopwatches!" Those who ask shall receive.

Off we go, my LBKs (Little Big Kids) and I, out to the ball field. We measure out 50 feet, we group up, we get our timers out, and off we go!! Did I mention we L-O-V-E science?

We called our experiment "What's My Speed" and we got out our handy-dandy science notebooks. We wrote down our materials, our question, our hypothesis, our method, and what happened.

Our Handy-Dandy Science Notebooks.

Each student was timed in how fast they ran 50 feet and how fast they walked 50 feet. Then they took the distance (50 feet) and divided that by their time. They figured out how many feet per second they could run and how many feet per second they could walk. We all had a good hypothesis for this experiment!