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6 minute introduction video highlighting some simple machines.

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Simple Machines Types & Functions  Kindergarten,Preschoolers,Kids

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Machines In Motion | Fun Movement Song for Kids | Jack Hartmann

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Great use of brainstorming

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Incline Plane - Sid The Science Kid - The Jim Henson Company

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It is a 25 minute video but you can break it up. Give an intro to what simple machines are and how we use them.

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Ramps: A Super, Simple Machine!  - #sciencegoals

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We have Ron's Ramp in the activity room for you to use. Good for inclined planes

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Pre Kindergarten STEM Activity: Bright Horizons at the Hingham Shipyard

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Book suggestion from the study

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How do You Lift a Lion? by Robert E. Wells:  SONLIGHT PRESCHOOL P

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A fun science book for kids about simple machines such as wheel and axels, levers, and pulleys. It also talks about gravity. It is part of the SONLIGHT PRESCHOOL P homeschool curriculum. Be sure to subscribe to my SUPER BooKBoY channel for more GREAT read alouds!

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14 min Sesame Street video putting simple machines together to make something to move the balls.

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Sesame Street: Building Rube Goldberg Machines Compilation!

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Quick video showing many simple machines working together.

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Using a lever.

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Balancing Act - Words on Screen w/ music

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Similar to Ron's Ramp Adventure. More ideas on using a ramp

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Kids love to send cars down ramps! The faster the better, but did you know that this favorite playtime activity is also an awesome science lesson for kids of all ages? Explore ramps, angles, and friction with just a few simple materials. This physics activity is a fun way to introduce friction, ramps, and angles to kids through hands-on play!

Exploring Ramps, Angles, and Friction
Supplies Needed

Materials to make ramps; you can use cardboard or wood planks!

Variety of toy cars

Variety of textured materials to create friction - There are so many ideas! We used a hand towel, sandpaper, and rubber grippy mats. You could also use foil or parchment paper, a piece of rug, or even dirt.

Tape to secure materials if necessary so they do not slip off the ramps

Stopwatch and measuring tape. These are optional but a fun way to extend the activity and encourage making predictions.

Determine how many materials you want to test and how many ramps you want to have available. This is fun inside or outside! Leave one ramp free of materials as a test ramp. Secure your materials to the other ramps as needed. Determine how you will set up the ramps. We used stairs, but you can also stack books. Gather your cars and kids!
Ramps and Friction Activity Set Up
Ramps and Friction Science Activity Play and Learning

Allow your kids to explore the bare ramp as they wish. They are going to be super excited to play, so it is often best to let them explore the activity freely for a bit first! You can also test out angles at this point. Which ramp angles are faster or slower? Which cars move faster? Heavier, lighter, longer, or shorter cars move at different speeds. This is a great way to get them thinking about the way things move!

Note: You may want to split this activity into two learning times since exploring the ramps is great fun all in itself and is still a simple physics lesson.

When the kids are ready, move on to your textured ramps. Let the kids feel the textures and describe them to you. This is a great time to introduce the term "friction" if you would like! Read a little bit about friction below and keep it simple for young kids!

Ask lots of questions! Before they test out the cars, invite the kids guess which texture might slow down the car or speed it up as it goes down the ramp. Make predictions on which cars will go faster or slower. Let the kids race cars down the different ramps. If appropriate, you can use a measuring tape to see how far the cars travel off the ramp. Which car goes the farthest? Which car is the slowest? Which car crashes, falls off the ramp, or doesn't make it to the end?

What is Friction?

Young kids learn by exploring, observing, and figuring out the way things work by experimenting. Exploring ramps and friction encourages all of the above. Kids will learn that friction can be two surfaces rubbing against one another. We experience this when we rub our hands together when they are cold. Friction is also the resistance an object meets when moving over another surface. The materials you attached to the ramps changed the surface of the ramp. The different cars will experience different amounts of friction when going down these ramps causing the cars to speed up or slow down some.

Simple STEM activities like this ramps and friction experiment are a wonderful way to get kids thinking, exploring, problem solving, and observing what is happening around them. There are many ways you can explore ramps, angles, slopes, and friction. Get creative with the supplies you have on hand and you can set up this science activity today!

BIO: Sarah is the creator of Little Bins for Little Hands where she shares simple science experiments, STEM activities, and tactile sensory play recipes. She is also the proud mom of a busy little boy. Check out their favorite science experiments and STEM projects all year long! You can connect with her on Facebook and Pinterest.
More Science Ideas

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Science for Kids: Exploring Ramps and Friction - Pre-K Pages

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Create textured ramps for kids to experiment and explore for a fun science and STEM activity; for preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten.

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After noticing children were building ramps for the trucks in the block center, I decided to set up this display in the science center to encourage more explorations with ramps.

The ramp is set up on the top of the science shelf with a long block propped up on a couple of unit blocks. I added a few items that children could test to see whether they would roll or not roll. I didn't tell them ahead of time, I let them predict and experiment and come to their own conclusions.

I used several "found" items for children to experiment with:

Mini syrup bottle (from Cracker Barrel)

Small cylinder block

Small toy car

Plastic Easter egg

Wooden cube

Wooden wheel

Roll of tape

Wooden triangle (from a set of lacing shapes)

Round craft pom pom

Extend the Activity

You can add different materials onto the boards, such as bubble wrap, wax paper, or sandpaper for the children to test which materials help or prevent the objects from rolling down.

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After noticing children were building ramps for the trucks in the block center, I decided to set up this display in the science center to encourage more explorations with ramps. The ramp is set up on the top of the science shelf with a long block propped up on a couple of unit blocks.

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Using a lever

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This simple machine science activity for kids is perfect for any time of year, but we've put a winter spin on it. We'll be exploring the relationship between a lever and fulcrum by launching ping pong ball snowmen in this fun STEM activity for kids!
(This post contains affiliate links.)
Simple Machine Science for Kids: Launching Ping Pong Ball Snowmen
Whenever I invite my kids to participate in science experiments, my main goalis NOT to make sure they master a set concept, but simply to allow them to explore the activity in their own way. Giving this freedom to children inspires them to make predictions and critically think about the world around them in a pressure-free setting.
We don't really get snow in our neck of the woods so we have to create our own imaginary snow activities~ like our indoor snowy toy car ramp, or like this activity- launching ping pong ball snowmen!

Materials for Launching Ping Pong Ball Snowmen

Ping pong balls (Optional: Draw snowmen faces on the ping pong balls with Sharpies to make this science activity winter themed!)

Wooden yardstick

Something to use as a fulcrum (Examples: coffee can, large wooden toy block, a log, or a brick )

Small plastic cup

Strong tape (like packing tape or masking tape)

An open space to do the activity (like your yard or a nearby park)

Optional: Paper and pencil for science journaling

Procedure

1. Tape a plastic cup to one end of the yardstick. (We started off with just a few pieces of tape, but soon realized we needed to add quite a bit more to keep the cup from flying off the yardstick. Really tape that baby down with some strong tape.)

2. Grab your ping pong ball snowmen, your yardstick (with cup attached) and whatever you're using as the fulcrum (in our case a coffee can) and head outside. Find an open space (like your yard) to set up your activity.

2. Place the yardstick over the coffee can (or whatever item you've found to use as the fulcrum).

3. Put a ping pong ball snowman into the cup.

4. Give the snowman a little pep talk before his launch.

4. Push down on the opposite end of the yardstick quickly (with either your hand or foot) and observe what happens to the ping pong ball.

5. Allow plenty of time for children to explore launching the ping pong balls. Optional: Encourage children to record what they are noticing in their science journals. Younger children can illustrate what is happening with simple pictures.

6. Depending on the age and interest of your child, introduce the terms lever and fulcrum. (A lever is basically a stick or rod that uses a pivot point or fulcrum to move something. In this case the yardstick is the lever, the coffee can is the fulcrum, and the lever is moving the ping pong ball.)

7. Invite your child to observe what happens to the ping pong ball when changing the position of the fulcrum. Older children can use the markings on the yardstick to record the location of the fulcrum in their science journal and how each location affects the distance the ping pong ball travels.

This activity can be a great learning experience for any age! Theo at 2 years old had a blast launching his ping pong ball snowman! He felt proud being able to set up the activity on his own and gained experience with cause and effect.

Lucy, age 5, was determined to see how she could set the lever up to get the ball to go the furthest by changing the location of the fulcrum after each launch. And she was very excited to find out what would happen when she launched lots of snowmen at once. She made all kinds of predictions as she explored our lever activity!

Want to Go Even Further?
Related activities to extend the learning for various ages.

Play on a seesaw at your local playground. How is the seesaw the same and different as your ball launching lever? Do you think the seesaw is a lever? Why or why not?

Where do you see levers being used in your everyday life? (Some examples: scissors, seesaw, pliers)

Go online or to the library and research first class, second class, and third class levers.

Design and build a smaller version of the lever we made today.

We have lots of other science experiments on Buggy and Buddy that you won't want to miss! Here are some of our favorites:

Be sure to check out STEAM Kids book and ebook for even more creative STEM and STEAM ideas!

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This simple machine science activity for kids is perfect for any time of year, but we've put a winter spin on it. We'll be exploring the relationship between a lever and fulcrum by launching ping pong ball snowmen in this fun STEM activity for kids! (This post contains affiliate links.)

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Engineering: My co-teacher and I attended a workshop last year called "The E in STEM - Exploring Engineering in Early Childhood" done by the folks from Kodo toys (). They said Engineering is all about problem-solving - you find a problem, you work toward a solution. Play is when kids make up problems to solve and call that fun. The focus of play is on the process - once you've solved one problem, you set up a new, more complicated one to solve.

The final week in our Engineering unit at Family Inventor's Lab was Contraptions and Rube Goldbergs: Designing Interactions between Simple Machines. It was all about taking tools and concepts from our simple machines unit and our engineering unit and combining them in fun and playful ways - a Rube Goldberg can combine several simple machines, but instead of making work easier to do, as Simple Machines should, Rubes are all about making a really simple task more complicated.

This was a day about Tinkering where kids were encouraged to build something, test it, adjust it, test it again, say "hey I wonder what would happen if we added X", add X and test it again. To read a great example of the process of designing a Rube Goldberg to pour a bowl of cereal, see this post on Hands on As We Grow.

Activities for Tinkering with Chain Reactions and Contraptions

Challenge of the Day / The Launch Table: On one table, we set up a target to aim for, pompoms for ammunition, and then ramps, levers and fulcrums, corks, dowels, blocks and plastic spoons for launch equipment. (In past classes, we had explored Inclined Planes, Levers, and Catapults.) Kids were just shown the target and given a couple suggestions for what to try, and then left to play. I listened in on a couple of parents giving great guidance and asking great questions to extend their child's learning. "What do you think will happen if..." "Hmm... that's not heavy enough... can you find something heavier?" "OK, you got great height with that launch, but how can we work on accuracy - aiming it toward that target?" "If you roll this dowel down the ramp, would it hit the target?" "You've got great accuracy when you aim from up close - what if we launch from further away?"

Ball Launcher: We brought our scarf cannon, but used it for launching balls (soft plastic balls like you would find in a ball pit, and Styrofoam balls.) Kids played "golf" with it, where the goal was to aim the tube so that when the ball shot out, it would roll through the tunnel blocks. They also did a variety of other experiments... a fun one would be to tie a hoop in the air and try to shoot the balls through it.

Ramps, Tunnels, and Balls: We have a Discovery Ramp kit from Kodo kids that allowed the kids to build some fun ramp projects.

Duplo Simple Machines kit: In the other weeks of our engineering unit, we would put out materials and instructions for a single project to do with Duplos. The goal those weeks was to give children practice following directions to achieve a pre-designed result. This week we put out the full for them to do free designing with.

DIY Marble Run: We had our ball wall there for kids to play with.

Marble Run: We also had this marble run, which is great, and could also be used as part of a larger Rube Goldberg series of actions, as seen in the video on this Tinkerlab page: http://tinkerlab.com/engineering-kids-rube-goldberg-machine/.

Train: We have a Domino Train which sets up perfect chains of dominos to knock over.

Domino Runs: We had dominos so children could set up chains of dominos to knock over. It's fun to also include some "triggers" for Domino chains - things you can use to push over that first Domino in the chain. Examples we had were our Conveyor Belt from inclined planes week, our Wrecking Ball and pull-back car from Towers week, and a tube that you could aim at the dominoes then roll a marble through. It's also fun to include some "goals", such as a target to hit - we used a Duplo tower to hang a musical triangle in so the Domino chain could ring the bell at the end. This is a Rube built by one of the dads:

Pulleys: There's all sorts of stuff you can do with pulleys and Rubes, but we just didn't have enough time to use all our ideas. But, if you have a more extended time, be sure to include pulleys! (Read about our Simple Machines unit on pulleys.)

Button Spinners / Whirligigs: (Original idea from ( Housing a Forest and Play, Eat, Grow ) Prep: These are traditionally done with large buttons. We wanted a bigger toy, so we used old CD's - we glued a button in the center with Tacky Glue. You can also use any metal or plastic disc (baby food jar lids, margarine tub lids, or cardboard disks ) and just drill two holes near the middle.

In class, kids decorate them with Sharpies, then ran a string through two holes. Kids could then put the fingers of one hand through one end of the string loop and the fingers of the other hand in the other end. They wind it up until the string is twisted tight, then stop twirling, hold the strings taut, and watch it spin. See a video tutorial at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QMmfDhrZxg and here's more on how to spin it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Jhc-tme9U .

Depending on the materials used, whirligigs can make a buzzing sound when they spin, especially if the outside edge of the circle is cut in a sawtooth pattern. See an article on the history of these at johnwinter.net .

Researchers have now realized this simple technology can be used as a cheap, electricity-free centrifuge. By playing around with the disc size, hole positions, type of string and other variables, they have developed one that can spin at up to 125,000 revolutions per minute - the fastest rotational speed achieved by a human powered device. And fast enough to separate cells in blood samples for low cost diagnostic testing by health care workers in the lowest resource places in the world. www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/button-spinner-health-care/512549/

Craft: Climbing Critters: Make and Takes had a great post on how to make simple "climbing critters" - cardstock animals you mount on a loop of string - when you pull on the ends of the string, they "climb." I made up a poster with instructions.

Mouse Trap: We set out the game Mouse Trap - a fun pre-made Rube Goldberg.

Water table: We put water wheels in the water table.

Intro to Concept: At opening circle, we talked about Rube Goldberg and showed one of his books of illustrations ( Rube Goldberg: Inventions! ), and we explained the idea of putting together a ridiculously complicated series of mechanical actions to accomplish a simple mechanical task. For example: instead of just turning on a light switch, you set up a ramp and a pulley, where you roll a ball down the ramp, it falls into a basket which pulls the pulley, which turns on the light. Why not just turn on the light switch? Because it's more fun this way.

My co-teacher had built this sample Rube to demonstrate during circle. The design was based on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ye7iAIPhmg

Sometimes the demo works, and sometimes it doesn't, and everyone laughs together, then we re-build it and try again. It's a good way to talk about the fact that sometimes things don't work right the first time - it doesn't mean we've failed and it will never work. It just means it doesn't work YET and we might need to work a little harder on it. (Last year, my parent education session this day was on " Willingness to Fail is the Key to Success" on the Growth Based mindset, intentionally matched up with the kids' theme of the day.)

After circle, we let the kids play with the Rube, and there was another peg board and supplies next to it to encourage kids to build their own

Books: We read the book Lights Out , which tells of a piggy who needs to figure out how to turn off his lights from his bed after he falls asleep. It's a wordless book that shows a VERY complex series of contraptions - fun to read if you add sound effects - "thwack" goes the broom on the seesaw; boingeduh-boingeduh-boing goes the ball down the stairs.

At closing circle, we read Mechanimals about a farmer who builds mechanical animals, including a pig that flies. Some books we've read for previous themes that could tie in to contraptions are: Awesome Dawson and Wendel's Workshop from Robot week, Violet the Pilot and Rosie Revere, Engineer from Wind week and The Most Magnificent Thing . You could also include Dumpster Diver - described in my list of books about Inventors. (These are all affiliate links for learning more - books can be purchased from Amazon, or you can get them from the library.) If you know of a great book about a kid building contraptions or Rube Goldbergs, tell me about it in the comments!

Song - we didn't find a song we loved for this week - best idea was Button Factory, which turns the child into a "kinetic sculpture" of movement. (Find videos on YouTube if you don't know the tune.)

Hey! My name is Joe. And I work in a button factory
One day my boss came up to me.
He said "Jo, are you busy?" I said,"No"
He said "push this button with your right hand"

A great preview for this class would be to go to http://josephsmachines.com/ and watch his video called Joseph on Sesame Street - about Kinetic Art. Then watch any of his other videos! Also, on YouTube, just do a search for "domino chain reactions" or "Rube Goldberg machines.", and you'll find PLENTY of videos to entertain you.

A fun way to prepare a child for this class or to review the ideas could be to explore a "contraptions" app. This is completely optional!!!! Parents who don't like their child to do screen time, can feel free to skip this idea. My favorite is Inventioneers. Pettson's Inventions, by the same company, is also quite good. Bad Piggies, from the Angry Birds Universe, also is a contraptions app. If your child ONLY does the app and only builds virtual contraptions, I think that there's limited learning potential here. But, if they work with real, physical objects hands-on, then explore in an app, then return to the physical objects, I think it can be a nice tie-in.

Inventioneers: This app is available on Android and IOS. It is free in the Kindle app store. It's all about Rube Goldberg type processes - you drop an apple on the character's head, he turns on his blower, which turns a fan, which moves a gear, which knocks the basketball off the platform onto the seesaw and into the basket.

A 6 or 7 year old might be able to play it alone if an adult played the first few levels with them to give them the basic concept. A 4 or 5 year old can enjoy watching an adult play it. You usually don't get the answer right on the first try - you set up part of the process, press play to test it, adjust it, test it again, set up the next part of the process, test that, adjust it, and so on. Talk it all through with the child. Tell them what you're trying and why. Ask them why something didn't work and what you can do differently. It's definitely a learning process which requires lots of tinkering.

If you want to play more with this idea, it's easy! Just put out loose parts, like blocks, bells, pulleys, dominoes, marbles and more. Give your child a challenge to complete. Encourage building a step at a time. For example, if the goal is to ring a bell, maybe they first build a domino chain to ring it. Then they add a wrecking ball to trigger the dominos. Then they add something to bump the wrecking ball to get it started and so on.

I've pinned several ideas here: www.pinterest.com/bcparented/preschool-rube-goldbergs/

The best discussions on the topic are: Rube Goldberg machine on Tinkerlab, and Gadgets and Contraptions at Science World. Enjoy!

Someday, I'd love to try building some automata to share in class. Learn about Automata at Exploratorium.

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Engineering: My co-teacher and I attended a workshop last year called "The E in STEM - Exploring Engineering in Early Childhood" done by the folks from Kodo toys (www.KodoKids.com). They said Engineering is all about problem-solving - you find a problem, you work toward a solution.

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Sid learns about levers

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Sid's Amazing Invention | Sid the Science Kid | PBS LearningMedia

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In this episode of Sid the Science Kid, Sid learns all about the lever, a simple machine used to lift heavy objects.

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Sid learns how to lift heavy objects

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The Tree House | Sid the Science Kid | PBS LearningMedia

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In this episode of Sid the Science Kid, Sid and his friends learn about lifting heavy items to high places using a simple machine called a pulley.

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The Broken Wheel | Sid the Science Kid | PBS LearningMedia

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In these Sid the Science Kid segments, Sid learns all about wheels--a type of simple machine--their purpose, and their history.

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Good introductory video

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The Simple Machines Song | Science Songs | Scratch Garden