Kindergarteners see if Humpty Dumpty is all he’s cracked up to be

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — Can an egg, with a face drawn on the shell to resemble the nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty, safely be dropped with the aid of a trampoline, net, parachute, pillow, sheet and the hands of all the king’s men? This was a question for SeDoMoCha Elementary School kindergarteners to consider before heading outside to see such an experiment conducted on the playground during the afternoon of Nov. 15.

Observer photo/Stuart Hedstrom

    HUMPTY DUMPTY HAD A GREAT FALL — SeDoMoCha Elementary kindergarten teacher Erica Tapley drops an egg while teachers Deborah Catell, left, and Traci Taylor hold a sheet to see if the shell can remain intact during a experiment on Nov. 15. The sheet was one of a half dozen methods of preventing nursery rhyme character Humpty Dumpty from breaking during his fall tested on the playground of the Dover-Foxcroft school.

    “We have been talking about problems in stories and we have also been studying nursery rhymes,” teacher Erica Tapley said, perched atop the platform of the climbing wall and slide as the four kindergarten classes sat beneath on the wood chips. “We have found a problem with Humpty Dumpty, the problem was all the king’s men couldn’t put him together again. So we tried to come up with a solution to the problem of how we could prevent Humpty Dumpty from breaking.”

Observer photo/Stuart Hedstrom

    EGGSPERIMENT — An egg dropped by SeDoMoCha Elementary kindergarten teacher Erica Tapley took a bounce off the trampoline, but landed on the playground woodchips without cracking during a Nov. 15 experiment.

    Tapley said the students made a hypothesis, learning what this word means, or a smart guess about what could work to safely get an egg from the top of the playground equipment to the ground below. “Could an eagle swoop by and save the egg?,” she asked. Tapley said this scenario was highly unlikely “but we have some real things that could happen. We will do our experiments and then find out.”
    First a trampoline was placed beneath for the first Humpty Dumpty test. The egg hit the trampoline and bounced up and off onto the wood chips, but the shell was still safely intact.
    Next came an egg with a homemade parachute attached. As the students recited the nursery rhyme Tapley let go, but the parachute did not slow the descent enough as the egg split open upon impact.
    The third test had a pillow on the ground, and the pillow ended up cushioning the egg. As the students saw that Humpty Dumpty survived they again cheered.
    Teachers Deborah Catell and Traci Taylor, who Tapley said represented all the king’s men, held a sheet as the ensuing egg landed on the fabric without a blemish.
    For the final test Catell and Taylor held out their hands to see if they could catch an egg intact. With the threat of yolk on skin, they cradled the egg enough to ensure the fourth success.
    Tapley said the lesson helped incorporate Next Generation Science Standards, combining science with literacy which is heavily emphasized among younger elementary grades. “It’s a fun way to get kids excited, I don’t know any kid who doesn’t like science,” she said.
    After the Humpty Dumpty experiments the students went back inside to record the results and draw accompanying pictures in their science journals. Beforehand they each had made predictions on whether the various tests would work.
    “Some of you were correct and some of you were not correct,” Tapley told her class. She said it is OK to be wrong, as they were making their predictions before the experiments were carried out.