Sleigh Races {Christmas Science Advent Calendar}

We continue our countdown to Christmas for the third day of Advent. I will be sharing a Christmas science idea with you at the beginning of each day until Christmas. Day 3’s activity is Sleigh Races.

Sleigh Races

Aiden loves racing cars down ramps. We had tons of fun exploring kinetic energy with ramps for the letter K in our A to Z Science series for toddlers and preschoolers. I knew he would be excited about putting a Christmas twist on ramp racing.

I made 3 sleighs from scrapbook paper. {I actually used a pattern from my Silhouette Cameo, but you could easily find a sleigh image online to cut out.} I taped the sleighs to Lego car bases.

We built a ramp from a piece of cardboard and covered it with white paper to represent snow. You could build a ramp out of any flat surface that you can incline – train tracks, a cardboard tube, a box, a board, a piece of cardboard, etc.

We timed how long it took each sleigh to reach the end of the ramp. They all reached the bottom at about the same time. The differences in the sleighs did not make an impact on the race times.

What else could you change? Try changing the surface of the ramp or the height of the ramp. Will the race times be different?

After racing the sleighs, Aiden tried sending Legos down the ramp without wheels {and had them crash into the sleighs}. He enjoyed the results very much.

How will you explore with sleighs and ramps? How else could you race sleighs? With balloon power maybe?

I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 4’s Christmas science activity.

More Christmas Activities for Kids

• Catch all of our Christmas Science Advent Calendar ideas.
• Explore pine needles and Christmas trees and take our Christmas science challenge.
• Turn your child’s art into a great Christmas project with these 15 Christmas ideas with children’s art.
• Check out all of our Christmas ideas.

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