Ice is Nice

We had such a fun week exploring ICE. Pre-k kids always have some interesting ideas about ice, and when we encounter so much of it in the woods (!) the ideas start flowing. This week we followed some of these ideas, and worked and played exploring the different properties of ice. There is so much interest and still some misconceptions, so we'll continue to explore and learn about ice until the excitement fades.

A great way to document children's thinking in school is through the Floor Book method. This essentially means capturing kid's thinking in a big book. You can see the start of our floor book below. Once we understand what children are thinking (as captured on the pages) we teachers can create activities that engage their interests and extend their conceptual understandings. You can look more closely at the pages of our floor book when you drop off your kiddos in the morning. Boy oh boy, pre-k is fun!

Enjoy the pictures to learn more:

Here is the start of our floor book - zoom in to see what different children know about ice.

We set up an experiment mixing water with different materials: salt, sugar, baking soda, water.

In this experiment the children decided whether to use warm water, salt or sugar to free the animals that were frozen into the ice. Salt was the favorite!