Fun with Ice

Andrew and I had fun with ice yesterday. A few weeks ago, we filled up an ice tray and added green food coloring. That afternoon, we took it out of the freezer to see what happened to it and to play with it. It was too cold to play outside so we just filled up a bowl of water in the kitchen and I let him play. Yesterday we were able to go outside and use his water table. We still had some green ice left, as you can tell by the water. When we ran out of that, he just used regular ice. He had fun playing for a good 30 minutes or so.

Benefits of this activity:

Vocabulary/Language Builder:

These were some of the vocabulary and sentences we used:

ice, melting,

"Which one do you think will melt faster, the big one or the little one?",

"These are melting faster, than the other ones did. I wonder why?"

The ice is cold.

"How many ice can you fit in that container?" This can lead to a good discussion using numbers and math concepts: "You can fit the big one in there", "You can fit both in there", etc.

Science Exploration:

For us, ice melting is just something that happens. To a toddler, it's a whole new world.

These are some of the concepts they learn:

1. Wow, you put water in the freezer and it turns to ice.

2. You take it out and it melts.

3. It makes the water cold.

4. When you put food coloring in the ice, it changes the color of the water when you put it in.

5. If you give them different size containers, they are able to see which ones the ice fit in and how that changes as the ice melts. They are able to pour from one container to another and see how water fits in different size containers. (I just saved old containers from pill bottles, plastic Easter eggs, frosting bottles, etc., along with their lids. I wanted as many different sizes as possible. I store them in a basket. He used to play around with which lids fit on which containers. Now he brings it out when we use the water table.)

They also develop coordination and skills as they are pouring from one container to another.