Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Science Activity - Frozen Fruit

For last week's Sid the Science Kid activity we solved the problem of the frozen fruit!

First we talked about what makes water turn into ice.  I asked Trevor if water would turn into ice if it got really hot or really cold.  He was a little confused in this area, but hopefully this activity will help him understand!

I had the kids put a few frozen blueberries in each section of an ice cube tray...




Next they poured water into the tray.  They loved that this immediately made the water purple and Trevor was excited to have made 'blueberry juice'!




Here's the final product...now off to the freezer!




I asked Trevor how long he thought it would take for the water to turn into ice.  He said 1 minute.  So, we set the time for 1 minute and checked the water to see if it had frozen.  Of course it had not =)  I love how preschoolers talk about measures of time like they know what they are talking about, but really they don't have the slightest grasp of the concept.  At least this was an opportunity to show him this is how long 1 minute is!

So I suggested that we set for timer for one hour and check back then.  When all was said and done, it took until after nap time for the water to be completely frozen (probably 5 hours later).

Now we had a problem on our hands.  The blueberries were stuck in the ice!  How do we get them out???  I asked Trevor how he thought we could melt the 'juice' to get the blueberries out.  We talked about how warmness melts ice.  I suggested that we put one ice cube in a bowl on the counter to see how long it would take to melt.  He thought we should put one by 'glow' our hot water tank.  He loves to look at the pilot light (hence the name glow) and thought that because it makes our water hot that it could help melt the ice cube too.  I thought this was a great idea for him to come up with all on his own!  The ice cube on the counter ended up taking about two and a half hours to melt and the one by the hot water tank took a little under two hours, so Trevor was right!

Then we took the rest of the ice cubes into the bathtub.  First I ran cold water over one of the ice cubes, then hot water over another.  Trevor got to see how quickly the hot water melted the ice (it was gone in a matter of seconds), compared to the cold water (that took about 2 minutes).  Then I let them have fun with the rest of the ice cubes in the bath, seeing how they could get the fruit out.  Both of the kids really loved this!  I'll have to remember to bring ice cubes out again for general bath time fun =)  I wanted to take pictures of this whole bath tub part, but didn't want to put naked baby (excuse me...big boy) pictures on my blog...but you can probably get the idea of what that part of the experiment looked like!


If this interests you or you think it would interest your child, check out this Sid the Science kid episodeand more!

Have you explored freezing and melting with your kids?  How did you do it? 


Happy Freezing! (and Melting =)

I'im linked up at:

Sciencesparks3For the Kids FridayPhotobucketClassified: MomPhotobucketGrowing Home

22 comments:

  1. Love Sid the Science Kid! Your kiddos are so cute! Looks like they're having a lot of fun!

    Okay...grabbing your button code right now to get it on my blog! :)

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  2. Great idea, Amy! And I agree, our littles have no concept of "time," and it's adorable when they think they do! : )

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  3. I've seen various ice in the bath activities, but I like the idea of trying to fish out the blueberries- Fun!!

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  4. Lindsi, Thanks for the invite! I tried to link up and am having some problems with your site, but I'll try again in a little bit =)

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  5. I like how this is such a simple concept, but an important one... not to mention something the kiddos can have a whole lot of fun with! Definitely need to remember to do the ice cube bath! :o)

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  6. Great experiment! We will have to try that!

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  7. Love this idea! We saw something on a larger scale on a PBS show - I don't know why I never thought of scaling it down to ice cube trays! Thanks for sharing this :-)

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  8. Thank you for the comments, ladies!

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  9. I love it, this is a great idea!

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  10. Looks like a lot of fun! We just did a freezing/melting activity with toys inside.

    http://moms-heart.blogspot.com/2012/01/little-penguin-and-icy-sensory-tub.html

    Brittney

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  11. What fun! We love Sid the Science Kid too. We did a melting activity this week too =-) Thanks for linking up to TGIF! See you next week,
    Beth =-)

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  12. Brilliant idea! I love how your little boy wanted to put them next to glow! Thanks for linking to Fun Sparks. x

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  13. Such fun experiment for little ones!! Thanks for sharing this with us on Sharing Saturday.

    ~MiaB
    www.mamamiasheart2heart.com

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  14. What a fun experiment! Love that you incorporated the show into your learning activity. My daughter likes Sid the Science Kid too.

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  15. What a fun way to learn! I love how little ones get excited to learn about the world. Great idea! Enjoyed visiting from the Hop.

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  16. Thanks to everyone for visiting and for all the lovely comments!

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  17. I LOVE this experiment! It's so ideal for young people! I hope you'll share it at Teach Me Tuesday at http://preschoolpowolpackets.blogspot.com/2012/01/teach-me-tuesday-1-17-12.html -- I hope to see you there!

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  18. What a fun way to experiment and learn about ice. And time also :-). Thanks for sharing on Monday Madness.

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