Kindergarteners Design Their Own Pinball Machine!

Kindergarten classes have been very busy investigating what forces to use when moving the pinball short and long distances; left and right; and hitting a target. They have now taken all that knowledge and designed their own pinball machine!

Planning a design for the pinball machine.

Testing the flippers and bumpers out.

It's all in the fingers!

We used cowbells as the targets for our
pinball machines.

Now the design is put to the test!

It's such a great feeling when your design works!

Trying to find space to test out the pinball machine!

Sometimes it's more fun ringing the incredibly
loud cowbells than trying to hit them with
the ping pong ball!

Dueling pinball machines.

After the design was tested, students went back and made changes to the design to see if the ping pong ball would move better.

Testing out if two targets are better than one.

Testing out a design with 4 flippers instead of
6 flippers to see if the ball moved better (it did).

Kindergarten Investigates Direction!

Now that kindergarteners know how to launch the pinball, it's time to investigate short and long distances with gentle and strong forces! First we practiced short and long pushes with a tennis ball.  We focused on what our bodies felt like when exerting each force: gentle or strong.

It's harder to roll the ball a short distance.

How long can it roll?

It rolls a little faster on the table.

Finding more space to roll!

Now we try short and long distances in our model pinball machine box...with a launcher!

It is so hard to make it go short sometimes!

I like shooting it long!

This is a lot of force!

Next up....making the pinball go left and right!  First we practice making the tennis ball go left and right...

Knowing which way is left and which way is
right can be tricky!

To the right!

Which way now?

Then we use our new skills on our model pinball machine box and launch the pinball left and right!

I'm moving the ball to the right.

The ping pong ball is going left!

I'm doing a big force!

Trying out what happens with a little more
height!

We discovered that making the ping pong ball go in the direction of left or right was easier than making the ball go a short or long distance.   

Kindergarteners Explore Forces!

Kindergarten has been learning that in order for an object to move, a force needs to be exerted on the object - a push or a pull.  We are learning about forces because during this unit, kindergarteners are going to be engineers!  They are going to use their new found knowledge about forces and build a pinball machine!

We have exerted forces on objects in the classroom.

Pulling the easel.

Pulling the door open.

Pulling the chair.

Everyone likes pulling the door open!

Smaller chairs are easier to move.

Drawing the object that was moved.

Pushing the chair with my back!

I can pull and push the chair.

The easel is hard to push!

 Next we had an object exert a force on another object.

Some objects can't pull another object very well.

Watch the craft stick move the glass marble.

The cotton ball can push the stopper.

It's hard for the pipe cleaner to move things. It's not that
strong.

The shoelace needs to be wrapped around
to move it.

After experimenting with different ways to move objects, it was time to apply our knowledge to our model pinball machine!  How can we get our pinball to move?

Sometimes the ping pong ball flies out of the
model!

Don't pull too hard on the rubber band.

The rubber band vibrates.

Keeping the ball in motion.

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Just the right amount of force.

Adjusting the placement of the ball.

Awesome!