Snow, Ice, And So Much More!!!!!

Well, this is how our homework evolved the other day!  We started about snow, and Mateo said, "Well snow is in the clouds, that is why the clouds are white."  So we looked outside, on that HOT day and asked, so, "does that cloud have snow??"  You should have seen the look on his face, "no!"

The children started talking about how rain turns into snow when it is cold outside.  This led us to talk about how water freezes, and how snowmen are made.  We brought in ice cubes and started talking about them.....

The children wanted to make a snowman, but the ice cubes were not "circles"  they were squares, and, they needed eyes, buttons, and a nose, and how can we put that on ice????

Jaxon said, "We can paint the ice!"  So, of course we tested his theory out.....

Alexnadre said, "It's not working!  The ice is melting!"

As the children were painting, more and more of them started saying............."My ice is melting too!"  All of the ice was melting, WHY???????  Well, the reason they gave us was that the "lights were on and it was daylight!"  We turned the lights off and closed the blinds, but two emergency lights stay on and there was still daylight outside, so they said that is why the ice was melting.

As we continued talking, we talked about why the ice was shaped like a cube.  Because the water was put in an ice tray.  So, we brought out different objects and asked the children what shape the ice would turn out if it was frozen in them.

circles, squares, rectangles, and we found a balloon!  That would make a great circle for a snowman!!!!!!!!!  Jaxon started drawing a picture of what a snowman looked like so we could know how many circles we would need.  He said we needed a "big, large, and small ball of ice". 

We all wrote, BIG, LARGE, and SMALL.  If we didn't know how to write a letter, one of our friends helped us out!

Then, we did the fun part!!!  Making the big, large and small water balloons!!!  Ricky said, "Hey guys, if we use orange juice in the balloons, we can make an orange snow man!"

Not a bad idea????? We just may have to test that out! :0)

Put the balloons together and you have a perfect snowman............

Once we did our "homework" and came back to school, the children realized that the ice melted in the dark, and at night time! So, Ashley said, "It melted because the temperature was warm!"

The children started talking about what makes the ice melt, and they said, "well, in the day time the sun is out and it is hot.  It is like lava!  It is like fire!"

They started talking about the color of the sun.  Between Ashley, Trevor, and Carter...........each one said the sun was a different color!  One said it was orange, one said it was red, and one said it was yellow.  We started looking through books, and we came across tow books about the planets.  One was an illustrated book, and the other had actual pictures.  When we first looked at the illustrated book, Ashley said, "that is not a real picture!"  Okay!!!

So when we looked at the real picture, the children said, "Well, we only see red and yellow!"  "The person who said orange is wrong!"

We brought out a jar and asked them to put yellow and red paint in it and see what happened!......

Tadahh!!!! We found the orange color that the other child was seeing!

So it turns out that we were all right!  There is yellow, red, which makes orange in the sun!  It is so hot that it melts the ice!  And we also realized that you cannot paint a picture on a piece of ice! ;0)

In this project we helped the children pursue their scientific inquiries and work on science projects in which art is embedded.  The teachers were able to help the children grow in their ability to practice scientific projects and represent their ideas through their art!