Ice!

Today we learned about ice! Each child got two ice cubes (that were really cylinders). One they placed in a spot where it would stay frozen.

The second ice cube was put in a place they thought it would melt.

They found a small puddle and lots of kids used the puddle. The secret of the puddle was not just that it was water, but it was water with lots of ice melt in it! This was just next to the door the custodian uses for his outdoor equipment and he'd dropped some ice melt when he was working this morning.

We tested this out with two more cubes - one with ice melt poured on it and the other with nothing. The cube on the right has the ice melt on it and is making quite a puddle.

We lucked out that it was snowing today. We grabbed some small rectangles of black paper and magnifying glasses. We checked out some of the snow flakes we saw. Most just looked like clumps of ice, but some had a bit of crystalline look to them.

If you want to do some further explorations with ice, here are some ideas:

Science words: bigger, smaller, colder, warmer, freeze, melt, absorb, crystal

Juice Pops – have kids mix frozen juice concentrate with warm water. Mix it until it is no longer frozen. Pour in to cups, add a Popsicle stick, and pop into the freezer. Check on them every 15 minutes or so and describe what you see.

When it is completely frozen, peel off the paper cup and look at the ice crystals. What do they look like? How do they taste?

If you liked this, try freezing other edible things like grapes and bananas. Try some frozen and at room temperature.

Watercolor Snow
Grab your water color paints and go out to the snow. You can use melted snow for the water or wet the paint before going out. As you paint on the snow, the water will meld the colors and wick the paint away. After a few minutes, you will have a new canvas. You can also do with food colored water in a spray bottle or regular water bottle.

Ice Balloons
Fill balloons with water and freeze. Only fill so the balloon is about six inches in diameter. Suspend with a close pin from a shelf in the freezer so the balloon will freeze round. Remove the latex and you have an ice ball. Put the round ice balls in a bath tub or wash tub and see how they move around. You can have races with ice balls.

Snow Flakes
Put a black piece of paper in the freezer. Next time it snows, take the black paper out and catch snow flakes. You can use a magnifying glass to observe them closely.

Fun winter books:
The Mitten by Jan Brett – discuss how different animals live in the winter, use ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.), and repeating patterns. Check out www.janbrett.com for more mitten activities and pictures of the animals that you can use to make patterns or reenact the story.