Getting Into Gear with our 24pc Motion Pack: Let’s Learn About Force and Motion
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There’s no better way to stimulate your children than through playing. Many of us can remember our childhood toys and the imagination around our toys! Whether we played with castles, built cars, or created colourful pictures, we always used our imagination.
Kids tend to learn more when they use their imagination, and our 24 Piece Motion Pack is an excellent way to encourage your child to learn. The motion pack increases your kid’s imagination and promotes STEAM learning.
STEAM education uses the idea of STEM education but takes it to the next level by adding in the Arts. STEAM education stands for science, technology, engineering, mathematics and Arts. Students will blend all five subjects into a learning environment and apply them to everyday life.
STEAM education promotes inquiry and process-based learning instead of encouraging children to learn facts and figures. It will teach children to engage in a research-based approach and one that’s perfect for higher education.
The growth of STEAM and STEM-related occupations are rapidly increasing worldwide. It’s clear to see the importance of STEAM learning and its future in the global economy.
The CONNETIX team of play experts is made up of qualified teachers, early childhood educators, industry specialists and dedicated parents who are passionate about open-ended play, STEAM learning and quality resources. Together, they share their expertise, experience and love of all things CONNETIX to inspire play-based learning.
We have designed the 24 Piece Motion Pack to promote the highest creativity and imagination. Each set comes with a unique bevel design, two-car bases, and various tiles. Children can build an enormous variety of objects through the 24 Piece Motion Pack, and these include (but are not limited to):
We have filled the packs with the potential for learning and creativity. From learning about colours and shapes, to gravity and inertia – watch their imaginations soar as they explore and learn through play. Featuring strong magnets, a unique bevel design and rivets, our Motion Pack is ready to be put into gear.
What’s more – if children want to upgrade their creations, they can expand their collections by adding the 40 Piece Expansion Pack and 62 Piece Starter Pack.
Learning Science is an essential part of any child’s education, and the earlier they start, the better. Physics can be challenging for many people, but when young children use the 24 Piece Motion Pack, it can really break the subject down for them and help them incidentally explore and engage many scientific concepts – simply through PLAY.
Children are genuinely natural physicists as they jump from sofas, dangle from trees, and topple structures and blocks. When you add a couple of objects, you can enhance your child’s physics learning even more. As children use CONNETIX motion bases and tiles to create trucks, trains, cars and boats – their play will likely be inundated with physics concepts and skills.
A great example is exploring movement through simple push and pull forces. Learning that they can move their CONNETIX vehicle creations by pushing and pulling on the motion bases. (And in doing so also exploring cause and effect). They may then progress to consider concepts of gravity and weight as they build bigger vehicles and whizz them around.
Quickly, they will naturally begin to gain a feeling for physics, even though they don’t quite understand the explicit scientific reasoning or mathematical concepts yet.
When exploring forces, we are investigating how to make something move, or change the direction of a moving object. While it may seem a simple concept, it is often fascinating to younger learners who likely haven’t stopped to think about this before.
A fantastic way to encourage children’s learning about motion and intertia (i.e. remaining at rest or in motion until an external force changes this state) is by rolling and pushing objects. We all know that children love to play racing games with their cars, trucks, and buses, so why not create a racing track where you can push the objects around? Support their learning by adding in terminology such as “push”, “pull”, “forces”, “inertia”, “gravity”, “speed”.
The children will soon start to wonder why some objects require stronger pushes than others. You can also try adding different objects to their vehicles (this will create more weight) and exploring different surfaces/terrains (this will change the friction and resistance) to make things more interesting!
Teaching children gravity can be challenging, but it’s much easier when you have some fun objects to use. Gravity is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy are attracted to one another. Gravity is everywhere, we just experience it differently depending on our state of motion. On Earth, our experience of gravity is most commonly thought of as a downward pull.
For early learners, the best way to help them learn about gravity is to experiment with the impact of gravity! Don’t rush to whip out your encyclopedia – instead, let children explore through PLAY and lead them to identify that all objects, when let go, will fall. (You can then extend upon this idea by prompting them to consider how quickly things fall, whether the certain things fall at different rates. Their natural curiosity will see them extend this play into wonderful physics experiments and investigations – without even realising!)
Using our 24 Piece Motion Pack, first design some vehicles to test out gravity. (Or maybe you want to first just use the motion bases on their own). Then find a ramp/hill/inclined plane (i.e. tilted surface) to set your motion vehicles into action and test out the force of gravity.
You can simply push your motion bases down a ramp. Or better yet, create two different cars to race down a ramp! Children can also explore how weight affects their vehicles rates of acceleration and deceleration by creating larger vehicles or adding objects inside their vehicles.
The 24 Piece Motion Pack is the perfect chance to get children to understand physics at a young age. Many mathematical concepts will be a challenge at young ages, but the 24 Piece Motion Park can give children a phenomenal head start in their science education.
CONNETIX started in 2009 when the two families started primary school together. Ever since we’ve created a line of children’s magnetic toys, with a strong focus on positive developmental aspects of physical play, these aspects include social and emotional development in young children.
We pride our products on having the finest quality and innovation, with a clear emphasis on allowing children to reach their full potential.
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