Winter Inquiry

Our first day back to school after Christmas break was full of snowy fun!  After morning recess Ms. Marrella and I noticed a few new structures around the school yard (including inside the kindergarten yard).  We decided to take a closer look at these amazing structures with our students.

While the students were outside, their conversations focused on what the structures looked like, and how the snow and ice felt and sounded.   Later on that day we projected onto the wall a few images of our outdoor exploration, and asked the students to reflect on what they had discovered.

Our reflection prompted some students to ask a few questions about snow and ice.  We added these questions to our Wonder Wall.

The next day, we tried to answer these questions with an experiment. 

First, we filled an ice cube tray with toys. 

 

Then, we added water and placed
the tray outside for a few hours.

 

We predicted what would happen
to the water and toys.

Finally, our tray was ready to explore!

We couldn’t wait to touch the ice and toys.  As we were touching the ice-cubes, we noticed that the ice was quickly melting, but why?  One student realized that our hands were warmer than the ice, and caused the ice to melt.  What a brilliant observation! The students also observed that some pieces of ice broke into little pieces when they tossed it on the floor.   

Our observations.

After our experiment, one of our students wondered if all pieces of ice weighed the same.  This wonder led us to another experiment.  In order to find out if all pieces of ice weighed the same, we decided to fill and freeze an ice cube tray, gloves, a sponge (we had to soak it with water first), and an ice pack. We then make some predictions. 

It took a few hours, and two freezers to finally freeze the all that ice (the first freezer didn’t work!).  We decided to use our pan balance to weigh and compare all these pieces of ice.  We observed that not all pieces of ice weigh the same.  Some pieces of ice are heavier, some pieces of ice are lighter, and some pieces of ice are the SAME!  

Our Winter Inquiry has just begun.  We can’t wait to see where our curiosity will take us.