From the experience of playing with ice cubes, the children realized that when ice melts, it becomes water. Then they started to wonder, how does water become ice? In the beginning, we had many hypotheses. Nico said, "take the water and get ice." Manu said, "put ice in the water." Malina said, "put paint in the water." Emilio said, "put water near the heater." Then Levi and Nina said, "put water in the fridge." So we chose three of the hypotheses and tried them to see what happened.
The children and educators took a jar and poured water into it and then placed it near the heater. We took another jar and poured water in it along with some liquid water color paint. Last, we poured water in a ice cube tray and traveled to the big refrigerator in the gym. We realized that there were actually two parts to the refrigerator! We learned that the top part is called the freezer and the bottom part is called the fridge. We decided to put water in both places.
The next day, we first checked the jar near the heater. We saw that it was still just water and did not turn into ice. Then we checked the water with paint in it. That too was still just water with paint and had not turned into ice. Breaking down the processes and exaggerating each step helped the children really witness the experiment. We as adults often just give or want to tell children the answer because we think it's too obvious or not worth the time. "Oh water won't turn into ice if you put it near the heater." "It's too warm(hot) to turn into ice." The children may not know that the experiment has anything to do with temperature yet. Instead of giving them the answer, if we walk them through the process, it will enhance the children's knowledge and understanding of the process much more.
To see the results of the final hypothesis, we took the trip upstairs to the gym to see if the water had turned into ice in the freezer and in the fridge. There was great excitement when we saw that the water turned into ice! We felt that the water that we placed in the fridge got cold, but didn't turn into ice. We can't wait to hear what the children will wonder about next!
Math creeps into a fun activity! On Monday, we tasted a slice of lemon and lime and voted on which we liked more. 2 friends liked lime, 8 friends liked lemon, and 2 friends did not like either of them. We used uni-fix cubes to represent the number of children that liked lime, lemon, and neither. When the educator asked, "which fruit did we (as a class) like more?" the children saw the representation and said "lemon!"
We also love the board game 'Candy Land'! Erika and the children played the board game together in the past week. The children started to pick up on the rules and began to enjoy the game themselves. The game center quickly became so popular that we had to play the game three days in a row!
