Many young children have a fascination with wheels and things that go round. That fascination is often reflected in their movements, such as spinning round and round, drawing circles and curves and building with blocks in enclosed circular spaces.
Early years practitioners can respond to that interest by providing opportunities for children to use and examine bicycle and motorbike wheels, to build with small-world wheels, to use wheels as printing devices and to explore peculiarities such as caterpillar wheels on tractors, cogs on machinery and clockwork toys, yoyos, or ball wheels on wheelbarrows. Such activities can also be linked to circular movements, rolling movements, circular and spiral representations.
Adult-led activity
Rolling wheels
Mark a space in the outdoor area for children to roll wheels, and provide ramps and gradients for them to roll the wheels down. Make sure that the wheels are chunky, squat and stable and that any rubber tyres aren't too large or heavy so that the children can manoeuvre them easily.
Key learning intentions
*To use a range of small and large equipment
*To use developing mathematical ideas and methods to solve practical problems
Adult:child ratio 1:up to 4
Resources
*Pram wheels *shopping trolley wheels *small rubber motor bike tyres *chopper bike wheels *ramps and gradients *chalk *water paint *water Activity content
* Provide time for the children to become familiar with the wheels and ramps, and how the wheels can be made to move.
* Talk to the children about the different types of wheels, the tyres, spokes and hubs. Encourage the children to find ways of rolling the wheels so that they will stay upright as long as possible.
* Make a chalk mark on one section of the tyre. Roll it and watch to see where the chalk leaves a mark.
* Ask the children to put a blob of paint on a tyre, with each child using a different colour of paint. Roll the tyres to reveal the tyre tracks and talk about whose tyre made which track.
* Make a 'puddle' for the tyres to be rolled through and look at the wet patterns they have made.
EXTENDING LEARNING
Key vocabulary
Wheel, tyre, roll, tracks, treads, ramp, faster, slower, upright, spin, hub, ridge Things to say
Pose some challenges:
* This time can you make your tyre roll for longer? How did you do that?
* Can you make your tyre travel further than that? How did you do that?
* Can you roll it so that I can catch it? How will we roll it so that it goes over there?
* Where did your tyre go? Can you follow the track?
* Can you find where the yellow spots cross the green spots?
Discuss with the children how they managed to meet the challenge:
* You made it roll more quickly that time. How did you do that?
* Well done. It rolled through the puddle. How did you make it turn like that?
* How did you manage to roll it between you so that you could catch it?
Discuss how and why the tyres move when they are rolled:
* Why do tyres turn when we bowl them?
* What makes them roll faster?
* What makes them topple over?
CHILD-INITIATED LEARNING
Provide resources to enable the children to explore tyre treads.
Additional resources
*Cardboard tubes *corrugated paper, anaglypta wallpaper, textured paper, roll of frieze paper with raised pattern, bandage or similar textured fabric, all cut in strips to fit the cardboard tubes *glue *paint *brushes *paper
Possible learning experiences
* Sticking textured paper round a cardboard tube to make a tyre tread.
* Painting the tyre tread and rolling it on paper to produce the pattern of a tread.
The practitioner role
* Demonstrate techniques such as cutting, sticking, painting without drips, and rolling.
* Discuss the patterns of the 'treads' and encourage children to focus on features of the print pattern and how it was formed.
* Relate these ideas to patterns formed by tyres on vehicles on roads and in sand.
ADULT-LED ACTIVITY
Quick fitters
Set up a bicycle service centre with a reception area and bays for parking and working on vehicles - bicycles, trikes or scooters. If possible, arrange a display with a real bicycle, and real bicycle parts, and have an adult change a tyre on a bicycle. Show how to find the puncture in an inner tube in a bowl of water, and mark it with chalk.
Key learning intentions
*To ask questions about why things happen and how things work
*To extend their vocabulary, exploring the meanings and sounds of new words
Adult:child ratio 1: up to 4
Resources
*Appointment diary *pens and pencils *telephone *swipe cards and machine *cash register and money *overalls and caps *spare tyres and wheels *spare inner tubes *sticky squares or plasters to mend punctures *tools for removing and replacing tyres from wheels *bowl of water *chalk *bicycle pumps Activity content
* Talk about experiences of having a flat tyre on a bicycle or a car, and discuss changing wheels and tyres.
* Introduce the various props and talk about how they might be used. Look at all the moving parts and discuss or demonstrate their purpose. Describe the tools needed to mend a puncture on a bicycle.
* Discuss the sort of services that their role-play wheel and tyre centre could provide and how much they might cost. Make some labels advertising the services on offer and their cost.
* When the service centre is open children take turns in checking the wheels on the bikes and trikes, and ensuring that they turn well. They can take out the inner tube and mend it and fit another into the wheel.
* Remind children that when the centre closes, everything needs to be left organised for the next opening time.
EXTENDING LEARNING
Key vocabulary
Wheel, inner tube, cog, screw, spanner, pliers, screwdriver, repair, renew, replace, puncture, flat tyre, air hole, inflate, spoke, rim, valve Things to say
* How do the wheels work?
* What will happen if you have a flat tyre? What happens to the tyre?
* Tell me more about the bicycle pump and how it works.
* What is this hole on the wheel for?
* How do you think this valve works?
* What could we do to mend the hole?
* What do you do to put this inner tube back in the tyre and make it fit?
Extension ideas
* Children write estimates, quotes and invoices for the tyre repairs.
* Develop the workshop by discussing workers' health and safety and together write a safety policy covering, for example, wearing goggles, using tools correctly and wearing protective clothing.
In a spin
Make a wind wheel.
Key learning intentions
*To develop an understanding of forces
Adult:child ratio 1:4
Resources
*Make a wind wheel based on the template below. Cut along the dotted lines, fold the dotted corners to the centre, secure with a heavy-duty pin and attach to a stick Activity content
* Ask the children to decorate their wind wheel template with crayons.
* Discuss and cut out the cardboard photocopy, and fold and pin as indicated.
* Take the wheels to the park on a windy day. What do the children think will happen to the wheels in the wind? What does happen to the wheels? Can the children think of another way to make the wheel turn? Which wheel is turning the fastest? Why? Are the wheels turning the same way? I wonder why that is?
Extension ideas
* Support children's experience of the wind by making streamers together to use outside. To make streamers, staple four or five strips of crepe paper to one end of a cardboard tube. Encourage the children to shake their streamers near the ground, then high in the air and then with circular movements.
* Use words such as twirl, spin, whizz, float and rotate to describe the movement of the wind wheels and the streamers.
* Explore ferris wheels. Talk about the London Eye on the Nursery World poster and play the games based on a big wheel.
CHILD-INITIATED LEARNING
Encourage the children to develop their own ideas across the curriculum by adding topic resources to your basic provision.
Construction play
Additional resources
*Wheels from a range of construction sets *wheels and dowelling from design and technology kits *cotton reels, card wheels, plastic wheels *mixed construction materials to make vehicle bodies *pictures of vehicles with different wheels, including prams, buggies, customised cars
Possible learning experiences
* Selecting just four wheels and making a vehicle.
* Working out how things fit together.
* Making a display of the vehicles.
* Voting to find out which vehicle is tallest, widest, strangest, has the biggest wheels and so on. Put a label on each vehicle to show which category it has won.
The practitioner role
* Discuss the wheels the children have selected, whether they are the same or different, and how they fix on to an axle.
* Demonstrate how to fix things together.
* Urge children to share knowledge about different construction sets, and to help each other find fixings that work.
WATER AREA
Additional resources
*Water wheel systems *water mill *plastic windmill *plastic vehicles *plastic gears *jugs and pouring containers *funnels and plastic tubing Possible learning experiences
* Experimenting with ways of making the water wheels turn.
* Finding ways of making the wheels on the cars turn by pouring water on them.
* Pouring water fast and slowly.
The practitioner role
* Ask questions such as 'What will happen if...?', 'What else could we try?', 'How might it work?'
* Discuss how to pour the water to make the wheel turn faster, slower or steadily.
* Set the children challenges, such as keeping the supply of water running for as long as possible so the wheel does not stop turning. Encourage the children to co-operate in solving the problem.
GRAPHICS/ART AREA
Additional resources
*Empty roll-on deodorant bottles filled with paint *Extra large pieces of paper taped to the floor *Felt tip pens bundled together with elastic bands Possible learning experiences
* Kneeling on the floor and rolling the paint bottles with large circular movements to imitate the rotating water wheel or the turning of the wind wheels.
* Using the bundles of pens to draw large and small circles and to show how the streamers blow in the wind.
* Expressing and communicating their ideas and thoughts.
The practitioner role
* Discuss the difference between drawing circles with the pens and with the paint bottles.
* Encourage the children to make a range of large arm and hand movements with the paint bottles and pens.
* Challenge the children to write words to make a poem about wind wheels.
Sheila Ebbutt and Carole Skinner are co-ordinators of the Early Childhood Mathematics Group
BOOKS
* The wheels on the bus by Rosanne Litzinger and Renee Jablow (Gullane Publishing, 8.99)
* Wheels Around by Shelley Rotner (Houghton Mifflin, 9.99)
