ScienceGrade 3

How Do Forces Affect Motion? Pushes and Pulls for Kids

A force is a push or a pull — nothing starts moving, stops, speeds up, slows down, or turns without one.

Learning Objective

Students will identify a force as a push or a pull, and explain how forces (including the non-contact forces gravity and magnetism) can start, stop, speed up, slow down, or change the direction of a moving object. (TEKS 3.7A/3.7B)

What You'll Learn

Contact forces need touching (a kick, a pull on a leash); non-contact forces don't (gravity, magnets).
Gravity is a non-contact pull that tugs everything on Earth down, all the time.
Friction is a contact force between two rubbing surfaces that slows moving things down.
A bigger push or pull makes a bigger change in motion.

Words to Know

Force: A push or a pull.; Kicking a ball is giving it a force.
Motion: Moving — changing where something is.; A rolling ball is in motion.
Push: A force that moves something away from you.; Pushing open a door.
Pull: A force that moves something toward you.; Pulling a wagon behind you.
Gravity: A pulling force that pulls things down toward Earth, even without touching them.; Gravity pulls an apple off a tree.
Friction: A rubbing force between two touching surfaces that slows things down.; Friction is why a ball stops faster on grass than on ice.
Speed: How fast something is moving.; A cheetah runs at a very high speed.
Direction: Which way something is moving.; A kicked ball can curve and change direction.

Check What You Learned

Quick Quiz

1 / 3

What does “Force” mean?

Fun Facts

A force is any push or pull — nothing moves, stops, speeds up, slows down, or turns without one.
Source: TEKS 3.7A concept; standard elementary-physics framing.
Gravity is a non-contact force — it pulls you down even though nothing is touching you and pulling.
Source: TEKS 3.7B non-contact-force concept.
🤯 WHOA fact: The Moon's gravity is only about 1/6th as strong as Earth's gravity, so a ball dropped on the Moon falls much slower, and the Apollo astronauts could jump many times higher than on Earth in the exact same spacesuits.
Source: NASA — Moon surface gravity ≈ 1.62 m/s², about 1/6 of Earth's ≈ 9.8 m/s².
🤯 WHOA fact: A cheetah's sprint (up to ~70 mph) comes from pushing enormously hard against the ground with every stride — the harder the push against the ground, the harder the ground pushes back and launches the cheetah forward.
Source: widely documented cheetah top-speed figure; simplified push/ground-reaction framing of Newton's third law for a 3rd-grade audience.
Rockets lift off by pushing burning gas downward extremely hard, which pushes the rocket up hard enough to beat gravity's pull.
Source: standard rocket-thrust framing of Newton's third law.
Friction is why a rolling ball on grass stops sooner than the same ball rolling on smooth ice — grass rubs more, so it slows the ball down faster.
Source: TEKS 3.7A concept: friction as a force that changes motion.

Lesson Info

Grade 3

2026-10-10

Standards Alignment

TEKS 3.7A — Texas Grade 3 Science
explore and identify forces (pushes and pulls) that change an object's motion — starting, stopping, speeding up, slowing down, or changing direction. *(Paraphrased for a kid audience from `content/_syllabus/curriculum-timing.yaml`'s HISD_AVA_HANNAH Force and Motion unit; verify exact TEA wording against the official TEKS document before any verbatim on-screen citation.)*
TEKS 3.7B — Texas Grade 3 Science
explore and identify contact and non-contact forces, including gravity and magnetism, and how each affects the motion of objects. *(Same sourcing/verification note as above.)*