The blue tornado experiment and video

Ms. Sarah found a way to make a tornado by using milk (which we added a few drops of blue food coloring to for this video) and water.  You can recreate this experiment at home by following the steps illustrated by Ms. Sarah in this video.  She used one of the droppers you use to give medicine to an infant or toddler.  It is very easy and as you can tell by the children's reactions, very exciting.  This experiment causes the children to use the process of scientific reasoning to figure out how the tornado works.  Vocabulary used after this experiment was done included words like vortex, circular, uplift, swirling and spinning.  The children also expanded on the activity by trying to recreate the experiment by placing the milk at the top of the container to see if the results would be the same.  They made their hypothesis and tested them.  The children were also encouraged to do this experiment without the teachers help to see if they could recreate the results.  The act of squeezing the bulb, controlling the flow of milk and placing the milk carefully at the bottom of the container took a large amount of concentration and fine motor control.  The children also had to wait patiently for their turn and negotiate who would be first and if they would work together.  And they thought they were just playing in milk and water!  Enjoy the video and let us know how the experiment works at your home.  Take your own video and send it to us.  If you don't video your child's face we will post it on our classroom blog.



Connecting to past learning - from dinosaurs to glaciers

 Earlier this year we did a unit on Dinosaurs (go back through our blog to refresh your memory on paleontology).  During the second semester we are connecting what we are learning now to what we learned earlier this year.  One example is our unit on icebergs and glaciers.  The children created their own glaciers and icebergs out of the abundance of snow  during the January snowstorms.  During the process of freezing and melting the snow each day some of the animals they were playing with in the sensory table became frozen in the iceberg.  Some of the children made the connection to the dinosaur unit back in November in the following way.  Dinosaur bones became trapped in rocks.  The Arctic animals they were playing with became trapped in the ice in the sensory table.  People who tried to get bones out of the ground or ice are called archaeologist.  The children remembered that they were being archaeologist when they started digging the play animals out of the ice in the sensory table.

 They connected their current play to their past play.  This is called LEARNING!  And this critical type of learning cannot be achieved without hands-on, child-directed play. 

You will see more and more play experiences during the second semester that connects current play to past play creating more concrete and long term learning.

These children are excavating, using their tools, chiseling through the frozen ice trying to free the frozen animals from the glaciers.  The students are developing fine motor skills, strengthening their hands for proper grip on writing utensils,  working together as a team to remove the ice, problem solving  how to remove the hard ice without using warm water, how to negotiate space and take turns, using their vocabulary, and most importantly, using their past knowledge learned during our dinosaur unit and applying that knowledge to thier current play in the sensory table.

What animals are frozen in the icy waters?  Which ones are mammals?  Do they get cold?  Why?  Why not?  What keeps animals from getting cold in the icy water?  Make sure you ask good open-ended questions and not just yes and no questions.  You might be amazed what the children will teach you!



Now the children wanted to create their own glaciers and icebergs.  Needless to say, Ms. Sarah, Ms. Nancy and Ms. Carole Dawn spent a lot of time bringing in snow from outside so our young scientists/meteorologists could create their own glacier.  Some of the students even created their own land masses.  Maybe we will have to teach the children about places like Iceland and Greenland and put up maps that show cold places like Antartica.



These students created several glaciers and noticed that rivers formed between them.  Next they wanted to create boats to navigate between the glaciers.  With this activity the students showed an interest and an acuity toward understanding land formations, waterways and how people travel by land and water.  This is one of the most critical ways we find out what the children are interested in and how we can create activities that spark their imaginations.

icebergs and glaciers

These pictures are not in chronological order because this activity lasted for several days and morphed as the snow fell and the freezing temperatures helped the snow and ice refreeze the ice and water each night when we put the sensory table back outside at the end of each school day.  This activity can be done at home by putting snow into a dish pan or bucket and letting your child play.  When the snow starts to melt put the bucket back outside overnight.  In the morning fill the bucket back up with snow.  Dump the bucket of snow and compacted snow/ice from the day before into a bigger bucket and let your child continue to play.  Repeat this process for as long as you like.  Each time the snow freezes, melts, refreezes and you add more to the refrozen ice pack more layers are added to your homemade iceberg.  You can also cut the iceberg in a half and use a magnifying glass and let your child view the different layers of ice.  You can also add a small amount of food coloring to the water before setting it out to refreeze to show the different layers of water freezing and layering.  The children were very interested in this activity and it lasted for almost two weeks.

We added Arctic animals and Native American people to our ice pack for dramatic play and nature science.

In the background we placed pictures of glaciers in the ocean so the children could see that only a small part of a glacier can be seen above the water and the majority of the glacier sits below the water where it is hidden.

The children started to create craters and caves as we began to let the iceberg melt during the day and refreeze outside at night.  We would add more snow in the morning when we brought the sensory table back inside when school started.

The children stated to create habitats for the animals around day 3 of the experiment.  We started talking about hibernation, why some animals do not freeze in such cold environments and that even though polar bears have white fur they actually have black skin.



Each day the iceberg takes on a new shape depending on how much snow the children add on to the base and how much melting and refreezing has happened the night before.  The children has also started to add some blue coloring to the melted water before they set the sensory table out at night to refreeze.  They noticed that in the pictures of the glaciers hung up by the sensory table the glaciers seemed to have blue layers and they wanted to create that in their glacier so they started to add blue water to their iceberg.  They are enjoying the results.



Exploring the ice world!



I have to admit this is my favorite picture.  It looks like snow art.  As much as I am looking forward to spring, birds, flowers and green on the trees again, this picture reminds me of a winter wonderland.  This picture is also a great seek and find activity if you print it and ask your child to point out the different animals.  Try it.

POLAR BEAR!