No sooner had the class gotten deeply immersed in their car making than the annual Sabot Hoedown was upon us.  Last year, Sabot preschool parent Rob Paige introduced derby racing to our fall festivities.  He kindly donated car kits to the school for students to make derby cars and race them at the Hoedown.  While the derby racing idea was in the back of our minds as our students made their cars to test for our Investigative Research project, we did not know that the Hoedown derby race would be reprised again this year…and then it was.  This time around, however, Rob was only supplying specs for students, who would be responsible for getting their own materials to make their vehicles.

When we mentioned that the derby race would be happening again this year, we told the children about these changes ( Rob will give you the specs, but then you have to build the car on your own ).  By this time, our cars were already in progress, and the children would be unable to reconfigure them to meet Rob’s spec requirements – but Rob did offer up another interesting proposition.  If the children wanted to enter their project cars into the derby race ( and they met his specs) they could race them or  they could simply take his spec sheet home, make another car at home, and then race it at the derby.  This year would also include a design competition.  The entries would not even have to move, but would be judged solely on their design and originality. Several of the third graders went home and made secondary cars to race – one student and his brother in kindergarten got second and first place in the racing competition, while another, who had begun work on a huge wooden truck in class, took it home to continue working on it and won second place in the design competition.

Rob graciously came to our classroom to share his building expertise and insights to help us move our project thinking forward.  In sharing his knowledge about aerodynamics, he encouraged the children to think about how the shape of a car might affect its performance.  Reese had mentioned something about drag during our earlier movement provocations, and again it came up in our conversations. With Rob, they began to understand drag as force, pressure, and friction.

Lila:  We are using the force of our hands [to move the cars] because when we push something we are creating force.

Soon after our discussion, one student decided to make some new adjustments to the front of his car (“my car is long – like a missile;” his car is the blue one below, next to Max H’s vehicle).

Other children decided to go for a longer and skinnier wedge design (top: Max H. and Max P.), while others tried shorter wedge designs (middle: Juliette and Reese). Like Alexander, Reese opted to add some lengths of sculpture wire to the bottom of her car to give it more weight – and hopefully more speed and stability. Others stuck to their original ideas, like Lila, who felt comfortable with her car’s width and blockier front (bottom right).

At long last, the children’s cars were finished, decorated, and ready to go.  Before testing them outside, however, the children took a cue from Rob and created their own car spec sheets.  They had been studying measurement in math, so this was an authentic way to put their measurement skills to use.  Knowing this information about the cars would help the children more purposely consider how the dimensions and design of their cars might affect their performance.

In reviewing their specs, we gleaned the following information our their cars:

Looking at this information (your car measurements), can we make prediction about what might happen when we take them out?

The children broke into groups to think about plans for our next steps – the testing phase. What do we still want to know about movement/motion?   What do we want to do?  To test?  To figure out?   How will we do it?   What will our predictions be?   Several big ideas came out of their plans:

It was clear they wanted to test their cars out on different tracks/different terrains to consider:

Left: Skylar:  The ball would need weight to beat a car.  It can’t be empty. We should test the ball with and without weight.

Left:  Sam:  I think grass will work with big wheels.  There would be more traction to boost your car up.  Smaller wheels will not work well.  They’ll get caught and the cars will flip. Right: Neil’s prediction:  We should test them on different courses.  The heavier [the cars are], they won’t go far.  The lighter ones will go further.

Below:  Xander envisions an obstacle course…

and with that, we were off to the races…

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