Ice adventures!

This morning we were investigating the icy North Pole where polar bears live! We had ice cubes in the water tray and talked about how they felt, what happened when we held them and what they were made from. We learnt and used words like melt, freeze, frozen, solid, liquid, pour and hard to describe the texture and the changes. The ice melted in our hands and when we put it in some cups of water. We could tell the ice was melting because it was getting smaller and there was water in the cup - this is because when ice melts it changes back into water.

Then we made some snow and created some icy and snowy scenes using Arctic animals like polar bears and whales. Some of us made polar bear masks and we used ice and snow shakers, white glitter and white felt to make beautiful scenes of the North Pole! We drew around a stencil of a polar bear and cut them out before adding them to our Arctic pictures.

We also decided to make some more ice. We talked about what we needed to make ice - water - and what we had to do to it - make it very cold. So we filled an ice tray and put it in the freezer. We talked about how we'll know when the water has frozen and become ice - it will be hard and you won't be able to pour it. We thought it would be ready in ten minutes, but when we looked back it was still liquid!

Then this afternoon we had to perform a rescue mission! Miss Ayres found some bears that were frozen in ice! How could we get them out?! We thought about trying to smash the ice to break it, but we thought that might hurt the bears. We decided a much simpler way would be to melt the ice. But which would be the best way to melt ice?

We decided to try some different ways and see which was the quickest. We put one piece of ice with the bear in in a cup of warm water, one in a cup of cold water, one in a cup without any water inside and one in a cup without any water outside. Which one do you think melted the quickest?

We predicted that the one in the warm water would melt the fastest because ice melts quicker when it's warm. Fallon was very good at explaining this and remembering the words we'd learnt this morning to talk about melting and freezing. We thought about the bear in the ice outside and what might make the ice melt quicker - Jack said it would melt quicker outside if the sun was shining, which we all agreed was right because the sun is hot.

We discussed how we would know when the ice had melted - were we going to spend all afternoon watching the ice melt? That didn't sound very fun! Emily suggested we "keep looking back at them", so we decided to do a "bear check" every five minutes. We looked at the clock and every five minutes called "Bear Check!" Then we checked our bears.

The first bear to be freed came from the ice that was in the warm water, so we put a number one next to that on the board. Quite a while later the bear in the cold water was free, so we put a number 2 next to that one. By home time the bears in the cups inside and outside were still trapped in the ice! Do you think they'll be free by tomorrow?

We went back to check on the ice we made this morning - some of it was frozen, but some was still water! We also decided to make some special ice for Nursery tomorrow - we mixed some food colouring with water and poured it into the ice tray. Check out our blog tomorrow to see if we managed to make coloured ice!