Tag Archives: ice

Rainy day science 😁

The children felt that today would be a good day to try out the thermal camera. A camera that detects heat emitted by objects converting it into an electrical signal , the signal is then used to produce the thermal image on the camera.

We made some ice the night before and tested our camera on it.

The children noticed that the ice was a purple colour through the camera. We filled a cup with warm water to see to see if it looked a different colour through the camera it was bright yellow. A quickly realised that the difference in colour was because the water was warm and the cubes cold. The children decided to try putting one hand in icy water to see what colour there hands would appear through the camera they looked purple because the ice had turned them cold. We looked at each other through the cameras we looked yellow E new this is because we are warm. Next the children looked at the temperature of the ice A noticed the warm water was 20.4 degrees Celsius and the ice measured -8.4 degrees Celsius.  That’s very cold as cold as snow commented A.

Some of the children decided to see what would happen to the temperature if we used the thermal camera outside. A thought we should jump in puddles and take a before and after temperature reading to see if the puddle warmed up with us jumping in it.  There wasn’t any change in the reading so T decided we should add some ice to see what happens. After adding ice the ice melted a bit and the children seen through the camera that the puddle had turned much colder.


As it was raining today some children wanted to do the cloud in a jar experiment. We filled a beaker with water, added a layer of foam and then used pipettes to drop blue colouring into the foam. I explained that when the cloud gets too heavy the drops fall from them like rain. We discussed that when water droplets get heavy in the sky, gravity pulls them down into the atmosphere.

Maybe you could try this experiment at home with different colours and let us know your findings!

Article 29- I have the right to an education

Frosty Fun ❄️

It’s been a cold and frosty morning in our garden this week. We have wrapped up warm and have been taking a winter walk around our garden exploring the frost and ice in our garden.

We have seen some frozen spiderwebs on our play house and enjoyed looking at the patterns the spider had created in his web.

We found icicles on our bike wheel they were very cold to touch but looked really interesting with different sizes and shapes of icicles .

We listened to the sound of the ice and grit crunch under our feet as we walked.
We discovered our obstacle course was all covered in frost and had to be extra careful. We learned how to risk asses our own play.

Our water tub was full of ice chunks we could pick up and investigate.

Today we decided we wanted to play In the snow. So we made our own. We used a mixture of shaving foam and cornflour to create snow.
 
It was fun mixing the shaving foam and cornflour together but it was a little messy but we love getting messy.


When we made our snow some of our children were mark making in it, creating shapes, patterns or even making letters.

“ I can make a snowman”

”Its’s cold like real snow”

“You can make a snow storm”

Some of our children used paint brushes to create marks and patterns.

Some of our children wanted to use different shape and sized containers to try pouring and filling the snow and transporting them to different places.
It’s been a different week in our garden this week but we still had the best kind of fun.
I wonder what the weather will look like in our garden next week? Will there be real snow for us to play in?

 

Ice ice baby! ❄️

We noticed on the weather forecast that it was to be extremely cold today.. so we decided to try a science experiment!

Last night, we covered our sea animals with water and left them overnight to see what would happen…

it turned to ICE!!!

The children discussed how the water felt to touch…

” it is so cold I need to wear my gloves”

”if we scrape it, it makes little marks on the ice”

Through exploring cause and effect, the children wondered how we could break the ice?
“we could hit it and it will break maybe”, “we could maybe scrape the ice like daddy does on the car” , “what about a hammer”.

so first we tried with little wooden hammers to break the ice, the children discovered that it chipped the ice a little bit but not enough to break the ice.

So then we borrowed one of the hammers from our tinker table…

“Look Sarah Jane it’s working now!”

”We can free the animals from the ice”!

 

Frozen gardens

It’s science week at Cart Mill and we have been discussing the properties of water and the effect of the cold. We found out during our visit from Williamwood that water is a liquid and that it can move about in a container.

We gathered some containers and used scissors to cut up some foliage to add before we poured the water in, then off to the freezer we went.

The next day we were surprised by the appearance of the water “it’s gone hard” “it’s cold” The water had changed from a liquid – something that can move about in the container, to a solid – something that doesn’t move in the container. When the temperature of the water becomes very cold (below freezing) it turns to ice.

The children decided to add colour to the water, so, very carefully we used droppers to add some dye “it’s getting  darker”

 

The children wondered what would happen if we added more water to our ice. We added another layer of foliage and coloured water on top of our ice. The water sat like a different layer on top of the ice, it was very strange, the water moved but the ice didn’t! We all wondered what would happen if we put the container back in the freezer so off to the kitchen we went with our containers. What will happen? Watch this space…

Hot and Cold “what happens ?”

What happens to water when it’s freezing cold?
Freezing happens when molecules of liquid get so cold that they slow down enough to hook onto each other to form a solid crystal. We watched this happen in slow motion on our iPads.  It thought it looked like crocodiles, birds or leaves. We then made our own ice cubes, we poured the water into the trays and placed it in the freezer.

The ice cubes are sticky and cold. I see patterns inside them . They melt in my hand but they are still cold ..

That was something cold but what about hot things? What happens when you add heat to popcorn?

Popcorn pops because each kernel has a tiny bit of water inside it. When the kernels are heated up to the point where it exerts enough pressure, the kernel bursts open. The soft material inside puffs up as it explodes. This then cools and forms the odd shapes we know and love to eat.

The shapes got the children discussing some safety rules; “it is very hot”, “we wouldn’t touch it”. Then they started to chat about what shapes and textures had been produced. “Mine looks like a horse.”  “I found the seed, it is hard.” “My popcorn is crispy.”

As the popcorn comes from seeds we have decided to plant them and grow our own popcorn plant! We have put the seeds in the green house. Let’s see what happens next!

We have had a lot of fun today trying out our experiments for science week and learnt lots of new information. We have lots of different experiments to try out throughout the week and we cannot wait!

When we met Winston the Polar bear

Today we had a very special visitor called Winston the polar bear who came to talk about climate change.

We made a mind map about what the children already know about climate change and what is happening to our planet 🌎


We discussed the ways that we help our planet at nursery.

“We put our fruit in the little bin”

” The white bag for the paper”

We then read the story about Winston and all his polar bear friends and what is happening to the ice where the polar bears live.

“The ice is melting”

“because it’s too hot”

We will continue to meet up with Winston and learn some more about our planet and what we can do to help at home and at nursery.