Title – Discovery – Bouncing high, bouncing low

By – Jenni Reinhart

Primary Subject – Science

Secondary Subjects – Health / Physical Education

Grade Level – ages 5 & up

This lesson plan is great for a sports related theme week.

Gather a number of sports related balls in various sizes and weights (from golf balls to basketballs and soccer balls). Compare how high each of the balls bounces and have the children predict which ball will bounce higher. (Will the golf ball bounce higher than the basketball when dropped from the same height? A tennis ball and a baseball are about the same size- which will bounce higher?) Write down the children’s predictions and keep track of how many they predicted correctly.

For a more advanced comparison, see how much higher an individual ball will bounce when dropped from different heights. (Does it bounce twice as high when dropped from twice the height?) Older children can keep track of their own predictions and may also come up with different ideas for making predictions and comparisons.

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Jenni Reinhart

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