Forces and Motion

Our theme this year for my 3rd and 4th grade students is FORCES.  It's hard to talk about forces without mentioning Sir Isaac Newton.  We studied each of his laws and conducted experiments for each.  The kids had a blast!

Newton's First Law:

I found a great video and Newton's law challenge from the Children's Museum of Houston.  The challenge was to stack a 15 pennies, then a playing card, then a five more pennies and see if you could get all the pennies on top of one another without letting them fall.  The kids tried so hard and you could see the wheels turning in their heads on how to not let the pennies fall.

Newton's Second Law: 

For the second law we made pom pom poppers and the kids created their own marble experiments to show force= mass x acceleration.  

Newton's Third Law:

The kids used marbles to show that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  One marble flicked into 2-3 others will only move one marble- not all of them.  

Another great experiment we did with Newton's Third Law was to build a balloon rocket car.  We found the instructions on youtube and built some really great cars.  

Kagu

The Kagu is a rare flightless bird that is also known as the Ghost of the Forest.  These birds live in the rain forests of New Caledonia and eat a variety of foods such as: larvae, spiders, centipedes, bugs, cockroaches, millipedes, beetles, snails, worms and lizards.  Kagus have skin flaps called corns, which cover the nostril and may keep dirt from entering the nose when the bird digs with it's bill.  They are the only bird that have this. This beautiful bird has white feathers and gray stripes that can only be seen when the feathers are outstretched.  The Kagu feathers were so prized by the makers of ladies' fancy hats that in the 1800's they almost became extinct.  

After learning about the Kagu the kids made their own Kagu out of a paper plate.