At Home Activity: Build a Ramp

A homemade carboard ramp taped on a bookshelf on one end and a stack of books on the other

The uses for empty cardboard boxes seem endless—but they can also be opportunities for trial and error, exploring spatial reasoning, and sharpening measurement skills. 

Today’s at home activity encourages your little ones to be their best scientific self by using all three of those skills, and more.  

Build a Ramp 

Goals

  • Engage in testing and retesting 

  • Enhance spatial reasoning 

  • Explore units of measure 

Children will: 

  • Use cardboard to make a ramp

  • Roll one or more cars down the ramp 

  • Adjust the angle of the ramp  

What you’ll need: 

  • Large cardboard box 

  • Markers 

  • Tape  

  • One or more small toy cars

  • A collection of things that are roughly the same size: shoes, pillows, soup cans 

How to: 

  • Cut the cardboard box so you have a large flat piece.  

  • Use markers to add lane markings to the cardboard so your ramp can be a race track for multiple cars at once.

  • Look around your house for a hard, elevated surface, for instance the seat of a chair, that’s the right height for your piece of cardboard. Find someplace that’s just high enough for your cardboard to lean at an angle and still reach the floor. Tape the top edge of your cardboard ramp to the surface.  

  • Place your car at the top of your ramp and send it down! Did it drive like you thought? If not, how can you change your ramp? 

  • Use something familiar to measure how far your car goes, like shoes. Line them up next to your ramp. My car went 4 shoes!  

  • Try moving your ramp to shorter or taller surfaces to adjust the angle of the ramp.  What happens when the angle is steeper? Does your car go faster or slower? Does it roll as far?