Day Four 9/16/19:

Review: The children made the connection with the Lincoln logs to Splash Mountain at Disney World. They decided today to change it up and call it "Smash Island". I have no idea where that came come, but they sent the first five minutes making towers that fell over. "Watch it fall... see!"

Then one asked, :so, what challenge do you have for us today?" And just like that they got to work. So we reviewed our past challenges:

• Can you make the marble move?
• Can you make the marble stop?
• Can you make it turn?

I was met with, "we can do all of those... we need a NEW challenge!" So, I apse them what they thought a new challenge should be. They decided they wanted to build something different then before. As you can see form the pictures, they found some new baskets in the cabinet and proceeded to build a new creation using the baskets to elevate the "tracks". They incorporated arches and "slides". one child noticed that you could place a marble on a single ramp and move it up and down controlling the speed. they decided to try different heights with ramps to control the speed. 

One child decided that they wanted to see if the marble could "jump" off the end. so, they used a wedge as a ramp only to find it rolled all the way back across the track. this was exciting in itself to see if they could get it to roll all the way back through the curve. So, they played with the speed by elevating the starting ramp and finally were able to get it to go all the way and jump off the end. they finally got it to work and they we thrilled! 

They were able to repeat this 4 times and then made a few adjustments in height to control for speed. then they tried running it form the other end. the marked about how fast they could make the marble go in both directions. "That was fast! Let's try starting it here now." They proceeded to try the marble in different starting positions other than just the ends. 

The most important lesson for me was to be quiet! where they once looked to me for the challenge, now they had taken ownership in their own "challenges" and discoveries. They actually came up with something much better than I could have asked them to do and they took ownership in this. what started out as a "smash island" day turned into the best learning day so far.