This is one of the more fascinating (to me) trays, mostly because it has made me realize that everything I thought was intuitive isn’t.
As adults, and even as older children, it is nearly impossible to imagine that babies and toddlers don’t inherently understand the basic laws of physics, specifically basic mechanics. None of us remembers learning that (some) things roll down inclines and other don’t. Or, that unpropelled things don’t roll up inclines. Or, that a wheel only works if placed in an upright position (well, even knowing which direction is upright for a wheel).
Now, having handed this tray over to Bean from ages 1 to nearly 3, I’ve come to realize all of these are learned, slowly, over the course of years.
I pulled together this tray from an assortment of toys she has — ramps and things going down ramps feature heavily in kid toys. My goal was to separate out all of the extraneous and simplify these toys to help her figure out the exact properties of these objects that made them move. I gave her a variety of objects that will roll down ramps, but some, like the cylinders and wheels, need to be positioned correctly in order to roll.
When I first gave it to her, around her first birthday, I had no idea what she’d do with it. She, of course, lunged for the ball first and sent it down the ramp repeatedly. Then she’d pick something else out and try to roll it down the ramp. She nearly always put the cylinders down either on their flat side or vertically, pause to see what happened, and then push push push them down the ramp when they didn’t roll by themselves. She’d deduce that the cylinders don’t roll down the ramp and ignore them in favor of the sphere.
Little by little over the course of months, she figured out how to make everything roll — it even took some work for her to figure out how to place a car so it would go down a ramp. She also started experimenting with whether things go up the ramp? She’d place the sphere at the bottom, do that pause again, then push push push it up the ramp. She’d also flip the ramp over so it was a horizontal surface and place the sphere on it to see what happened. When nothing happened, she’d flip the ramp back over and try out a new experiment.
At nearly 3, she still runs through these little experiments, as if to assure herself that this is indeed how the world works. Now, though, she moves on to experimenting with how quickly/far different things roll down the ramp: momentum. She’ll point out that the sphere travels farther on the ground than the car. She insists that we have races to see whose object goes further. She’ll also send two objects down on the ramp together, and point out that one surpasses the other.
So far, I haven’t stopped to help her figure anything out or explain to her why a sphere might roll farther than a car. There will be time to explain mass and velocity in the years to come. For now, it’s just fun to sit back and watch her test out hypotheses and make deductions based on her findings.
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Shopping List: ramp, sphere, long cylinder, egg, small car, napkin ring, Tyco truck
