🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🌍 Nature Literacy — Learning the names, habits, and relationships of plants, animals, and natural phenomena builds the nature literacy that connects children to the living world and lays the groundwork for environmental stewardship.
- 🔄 Flexible Thinking — When an experiment produces an unexpected result, children practice adapting their thinking — a form of cognitive flexibility that makes them more resilient learners across all subjects.
- 🤔 Critical Thinking — Making a prediction, testing it, and explaining the result develops logical reasoning — the ability to move from observation to explanation that underlies all scientific, mathematical, and analytical disciplines.
- 🌱 Curiosity & Wonder — Science that feels like magic cultivates the sense of wonder that keeps children asking questions throughout their lives — the foundational attitude that drives all learning and discovery.
Taking a sled out in the snow is a great way to get some exercise with your preschooler during the winter months. Getting fresh air and exercise are not the only things you can do while sledding—you can also learn about physics!
Why do sleds work? They work for two reasons, one, the snow is smooth and removes friction that grass alone creates and two, the force of gravity helps the sled move down the hill quickly. Introduce your preschooler to the concepts of gravity and friction with a sledding activity.
What You Will Need
1. a sled or plastic saucer of some sort (in a pinch a plastic garbage bag will do)
2. a big piece of card board
3. a small hill or incline with at least 3 inches of snow on the ground
What to Do
Take you sled and cardboard to the top of your snowy incline. First, have your preschooler sit on the piece of cardboard. Give your preschooler a little push down the hill. What happens? Does your preschooler move fast or slow on the cardboard?
Next, put your preschooler on the sled and give a push down the hill. Does your preschooler go fast or slow?
Which one is faster? Have your preschooler guess why one is faster than the other. This is hypothesizing. Try variations with different materials you have around the house.
Explanation
What makes the sled faster than the cardboard? The sled (or whatever you use) is smooth and designed to have little friction against the snow. Friction is the force that resists motion between the ground and the sled. Gravity is the force that pushes us towards the ground. The slope of the hill makes it easy for your preschooler’s weight to move down the hill. Little friction and the force of gravity along with a sloped surface make it easy for your preschooler to move fast down the hill. Also, the heavier the preschooler, the faster he will move down the hill due to acceleration of gravity (a principle probably a little beyond a preschooler, so we won’t get into that here).
The snow and ice have little resistance—this is why we slip and fall on ice patches. Snow creates more friction than ice but when snow is compacted it creates less friction because it becomes icy. The cardboard has more resistance to the snow because it is not as smooth as a sled. It has rough patches that make it more resistant to moving down the hill. Instead of sliding or gliding down the hill the material gets wet and moves slowly, if at all, in the snow.
Variations
This activity can also be done on a sandy hill. You can also use other household items such as a cookie sheet or pie tin.
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"Unexpected" is the word to use rather than "wrong" — in science, results that don't match predictions are the most interesting. "The result was different from what we expected — that means we discovered something! Let's figure out why." This reframe makes the unexpected result a success rather than a failure, because it produced a question worth investigating. Science confidence is built by treating all results as valid data, never as failure.
Commercial science kits designed for ages 4+ can be engaging starting points. Look for kits that use simple, safe materials and produce visually dramatic results (crystal growing kits, volcano kits, solar system model kits). Avoid kits with very small parts, complex safety requirements, or expected outcomes that are frustrating when not achieved. The best kits are those that leave children wanting to experiment further beyond the kit's instructions — look for kits with extension activities built.
