Ice, Ice Baby!

Well we haven't had a lot of snow this year in Indiana, however we have had a lot of ice, so I decided we should learn and experiment with this cold, slippery substance in class all week.

We began the week off right by me humming the instrumental part to "Ice, Ice Baby" and the kiddos chiming in with the words to the verse. HILARIOUS! Even more hilarious when they started greeting other teachers and their parents with this phrase when they were asked what they learned about in class that day. I will be doing this every year now as a tradition.

Everyday, our class has a circle time where we do the calendar, sing our "Days of the Week" song, and introduce our unit. I froze water in a container and I had one container just full of water. During circle time, to introduce the the subject, I had each kiddo take a turn to feel the difference between the solid water and the liquid water. Then we discussed our observations.

1. With the container of water, I let each student choose a toy or object to put into the container. Some of them sank, others were floating - this lead to side discussion (YEY! I love when the kiddos want to discover more!). Then I told them I would put the container in the freezer overnight and we will see what happens to the water and the objects tomorrow.

Froze water with objects inside, over night to show kiddos what happens to water when it gets really cold.

Everyday we split the kiddos up to go to centers. This gives them more interaction with new friends and they can get in a deeper level of play without distractions when there are only a few kiddos in each center. It also allows the teacher to get a better grasp on what a student does/ does not understand about a concept because it is a small group where the students are more likely to participate.

2. For our sensory table center, I just filled it to the brim with ice, added a few plastic cups for dumping and filling, as well as a few Arctic animals for pretend play.

Ice had already begun to melt in table - great spring board to discuss solid vs. liquid, but still the same material.

Kiddos didn't mind the coldness at all, they were having too much fun!

Objects frozen in ice. Kiddos were playing with it while we monitored how long it would take to melt.

3. The next day we discussed Igloos and people who live in the snow and ice. We decided we wanted to build an ice castle!

The night before (very important) I froze two dozen plus solo cups of water in different sizes and some bigger plastic containers as well. Food coloring was added to some to give our ice house a cool factor. 

Tell kiddos to bring yucky gloves or supply them with plastic gloves so they can better enjoy the activity.

My kiddos thought the colored ones were neat, but they didn't like the color getting on their hands.

We all went outside to the playground to begin building with our ice blocks. 

The ice castle didn't make it too far, but when our time was up, they did enjoy seeing how far the ice could slide on the playground!

4. Again, freeze everything the night before you need it or else it WILL NOT be fully frozen and that can affect experiments and visual aids. I froze water in a clear circular container and grabbed a teaspoon full of ice melt on my way into school. For a visual aid of how ice melts we did an experiement with ice, ice melt, and food coloring.

Let the students touch the ice so they know it is fully solid, not beginning to melt yet. Pick a few points on top of the ice and make small piles of 5-7 pieces of ice melt by the edges of the container and some in the center. It will take 10-20mins to melt the ice a bit.

Rock salt placed at different points around container.

Have students observe with their eyes the water at the bottom of the container and how the ice wobbles in the container now. THEN the fun. Add a different color of food coloring to each point the ice melt was placed and watch the pathways that were formed from the melting ice appear! 

Can you see the places where the ice has melted?

5. ART: there is not to terribly much one can do with ice and art, but painting with colored ice is one!
Fill an ice cube tray with water, add different colors of food coloring and popscicle sticks, freeze overnight. We discussed the Ice Age period and how mankind would wear skins of animals to keep warm as well as paint their stories on cave walls because they didn't have story books like we do now. So the kiddos painted a story using colored ice cubes. You like that segue way? LOL!

Make sure you use water color paper to paint on or the water will tear right through the paper.

6. Archeologists at the sensory table: I couldn't find any Ice Age plastic animals at Toys R' Us or Target and I really did not feel like driving across town to Walmart, so I settled for plastic dinosaur fossils at Hobby Lobby. I froze the fossils in layers so they wouldn't all be sitting at the bottom of the ice. The day we looked at the Ice Age we discussed wolly mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and other animals that lived during the time period that we have found buried in ice. Dinosaur fossils were found under the ice too, right? Hey I had to make the connection somehow.

During center time, I added the ice blocks which contained the dinosaur fossils to the sensory table, along with "digging tools" a.k.a spoons.

The kiddos had to be archeologists and work together to try to gently free the fossils.

Digging holes through the layers - Making progress!

It was a fantastic week! The kiddos were so involved and when we went outside they were all incredibly excited when they would find a patch of ice on the ground because of the rain the night before. As teachers, we will never get a lot of recognition for all we do, if any, however knowing a child is excited about learning is a huge nod to us that we must being doing something right!

Until next time! Jackie