On Tuesday morning, we arrived to a very cold Nursery and our garden was covered in frost and ice. When we went outside, children had lots of questions to ask about the frost, but nobody seemed too sure about how it had got there and where it went in the afternoon when the sun came out.
There was talk of snow, Jack Frost visiting and that it had fallen from the sky and that it ‘melted’ but children couldn’t explain what ‘melting’ means. We talked about lots of different things – ice, snow, frost, rain, water, freezers and melting and children were keen to investigate.
We looked at some ice from the freezer and predicted what would happen to it if we kept it out of the freezer in a bowl. Children suggested that the sun might make it melt and another child suggested that hot water might make it melt. We left some ice in our classroom, some in the sun outside and we also added hot water to some ice, too. We talked about how it changed and what happened to the ice in the different places. After lots of discussion, and after noticing that it melted in our hands as well, we worked out that when ice gets warmer, it melts and becomes water.
Why do we sometimes have ice in the Nursery garden in the morning? Children had lots of ideas and we decided to set up an experiment to see what would happen if we put some water in different containers over night. We also looked around the garden to find some natural objects to add into the water.
When we returned to Nursery on Wednesday, nothing had happened! We still had cups and pots of water. Why didn’t we have any ice? We tried again on Wednesday night, and on Thursday morning, we were very excited to find some ice. Again, after lots of discussion and ideas, we agreed that it had to be very, very cold at night for the water to freeze and turn into ice.
Have a go at making some ice at home. What do you need to do? Where do you need to put it? Ask your child to help you fill an ice cube tray with water and put it in the freezer. Check on it a few times the same day. Has anything happened? Leave it over night. What has happened to the water in the tray? Why? What does the freezer do?
Children have enjoyed reading ‘Dinosaur Roar’ this week, so we’ll continue with their interest in dinosaurs next week. We’ll be weighing dinosaur bones, investigating dinosaur footprints and drawing eyes, horns and sharp claws to create our own, fearsome dinosaurs.