The children in Toddler 1 at RisingOaks Early Learning | St. Brigid have been gravitating towards the cars in the room. Emmett is often seen down at ground level as he rolls the truck back and forth. This led the educators to plan activities that give the children an opportunity to explore with wheels. In November, we made wheel tracks on paper while driving our vehicles through the paint, which the children loved! This month, educator Trish attached different sized wheels to dowel rods and then set up the unit blocks to create pathways including the ramps. This allowed the children to explore the rolling of the wheels on top of the unit blocks and down the ramps. The children quickly discovered how having one wheel on a dowel differed to having two wheels, and how two big wheels differed from two small wheels, in how fast or slow the wheels went and how they turned! Elizabeth had the large wheel moving in circle. Levi watched the small ones as they sped down the ramp and across the carpet. As he rolled it back up the ramp he stopped and said "uh oh!" "What's wrong?" the educator asked. Levi replied, "It's stuck." The unit blocks had separated leaving a gap. "How can we fix it?" we asked the children. Together, we pushed the blocks back in place, and we kept on rolling! We wonder what we could discover next with wheels?
