Hold on tight—this week we’re diving into the world of motion with our new unit: Pushes and Pulls! 🧲💨
Our little scientists will become force explorers—experimenting, testing, and discovering how objects move when we push or pull them. From rolling balls to sliding books, we’ll learn that every movement starts with a force!
We’ll explore:
Key vocabulary: push, pull, force, motion, direction, speed, friction
Here’s how you can keep the discovery rolling at home:
Use a ball or toy car. Try rolling it on different surfaces—tile, carpet, grass.
Ask: “Which surface makes it go fastest? Which slows it down?”
You just explored friction!
Gather toys that you push or pull—wagons, toy cars, yo-yos, doors!
Ask: “Am I pushing or pulling right now?”
Try both and see how it changes the motion!
Tie a string to an empty laundry basket and have your child pull it gently.
Then fill it with a few soft items and try again—was it harder to pull?
That’s because heavier objects need more force!
Blow up a balloon and let it go. Watch it zoom!
Talk about how the air pushes out, making the balloon move forward.
Look around your house or neighborhood for things you can push or pull:
doors, drawers, wagons, swings, grocery carts!
Make a chart with two columns—Push and Pull—and draw or list examples in each.
At dinner or in the car, try asking:
• “What’s something you pushed today?”
• “What’s something you pulled?”
• “What happens when you push harder?”
• “Can you think of something that moves both ways?”
In class, we’ll do hands-on experiments to see how force changes motion.
Students will:
✅ Make predictions and test them
✅ Use everyday materials to explore cause and effect
✅ Record their observations with pictures and words
A push or a pull is called a force, and it’s what makes things move!
By exploring how objects start, stop, speed up, or slow down, your child is learning the foundations of physics in a fun, hands-on way.
Keep experimenting, exploring, and asking “What will happen if…?”—that’s how scientists are made! 🔍💡
This is our seventh week of Service Learning. This week, we did a review game of pollinators and how to help them. We ended the lesson by coloring a pollinator.
During Science this week we will be learning about the life cycle of a pumpkin. Your students will learn how pumpkins start from a seed and grow into a pumpkin. On Friday, we will get the opportunity to dissect pumpkin as a class. We will review what living things need to live and grow. Plants need air, light, space, soil, and water to live and grow.
Pumpkin Life-Cycle
Seed → Sprout → Vine → Flower → Green Pumpkin → Pumpkin
We are continuing our science unit on nature walks this week! Students will once again explore the plants and animals around our school as we take walks through the campus. Our focus will be on how we can help protect nature and keep it safe. For example, keeping sticks and rocks outside, leaving leaves on trees, and not picking flowers. We’ll also talk about what plants need in order to survive.
In our service learning lesson, we’ll continue our discussion on how we can help pollinators by planting flowers, leaving dandelions for bees, providing clean water sources, and being mindful not to disturb their habitats. Students will reflect on the small but powerful ways they can support pollinators in our area.
This week we will be doing another science unit, that will focus on the nature around our school! To do this, we will be taking a series of nature walks around our school. We will be taking a look at all of the plants and animals that we see around our school, and focusing on how we can help nature, and keep it safe. We are going to be talking about how it is important to keep nature in nature (for example, keeping sticks and rocks outside, not ripping leaves off of trees and flowers off of flowers). We will also be touching on what plants need to survive.
In our service learning lesson this week, we will be talking again about how we can support the pollinators in our area
It is our second week of Social Studies, we will continue learning about our community helpers and what it means to be a part of a community. Encourage your student to identify community helpers around your neighborhoods and discuss what they do and why it is important.
BONUS: Thank a local community helper. Create a card or just say thank you to the community helpers.
This week in our Service Learning curriculum we are learning about how we can protect the pollinators that we learned about last week. We will talk about the best ways we can protect them at school, and at home! For Social Studies this week, we will be talking about communities, and community helpers. We will be talking about what is in our communities, and the people that help us in those communities.
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This week in Science, we are going to be starting our first Service Learning lesson, in which we will begin to talk about what service learning is. At Westgate, we describe service learning as: doing something helpful. We might help clean up our school, write kind notes to seniors, or plant a garden.
We will also be starting our first science unit as a class, in which we will be taking a look at each of the seasons. We will be creating a ‘doll’ and then dressing it up for each season as we go! |