The objectives where:-
- Recognise and describe how things do not go, work, move, or change by themselves. Something additional is required.
- In any given situation, identify the "something additional" as: heat, electricity, lighr, or movement. Which are knows as "forms of energy"
- Describe that many things (gas, wood, batteries, and a food) are not energy by themselves, but contain stored energy that may be released.
- Recognise and tell how various devices (light bulbs and motors) change one form of energy to another.
- Recognise that energy is not created from nothing. It must always come from another source.
- Recognise and state how energy is never changed into solid, liquid, or gas and visa versa.
We split these objectives into three parts, forms of energy and what they do, storage and release of energy and energy changing from one form to another.
I made four energy cards and a number of action cards and asked the children to match the energy cards to the various action cards as in the below pic.
Obviously those with a physics background will realise that we are taking some liberties in the definitions but it is simply to convey the concept, without getting bogged down in detail. Once the concept is understood teaching the definitions is simple.Our discussions lead us on a walk around the house to view where our electricity enters and the fuse box which lead us to a discussion on safety. We also had a long discussion on fridges and how energy is involved in the freezing process. Food was another topic that came up, and the cycle of light energy in photosynthesis creating food for plants that then get eaten by us to release energy.
Our accompanying book Charging about - the story of electricity by Jacqui Bailey was perfect to introduce how electricity is created and we ended off viewing a youtube clip on a hydro-electric power station and marvelling at how loud the rushing water was!
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