#1 - Icicle Counting, Sorting, and Comparing

Want to make a HUGE impact and capture their attention while learning to count to 10, 20, 30?  Try this activity.  Let the children help pluck icicles from porch railings, awnings and eaves and lay them out.  They are already firing up all those incredible synapses with the sensations of hard, cold ice and the excitement of being able to help choose, hold, and place the counting materials.  

This beats flash cards all to pieces!!  I then allowed my older preschoolers to lead the counting as they touched and pointed to each icicle.  I couldn't have stopped them from counting if I wanted to!  You know it is a success when the repeat it over and over and over with giggles and grins!!!

Sorting was a natural second. They children's chatter was all about, "Look how big THAT one is!" and "Awe!!!  Look how tiny that one is!!"  We sorted by length and then by width.  We observed that the little ones easily broke into smaller and smaller sizes, but the larger ones were heavy and strong! 

This led us to comparisons, of course!  I asked the questions, "Which one do you think will melt the fastest?" and "Which one will melt the slowest?"  "Which one do you think will be the heaviest?" "...the lightest?" 

Science AND math???  Oh be still my teaching heart!!!
   

If you give a preschooler a tape measure...  Yes, all of you seasoned teachers out there know there is not much a child covets more than a tape measure. It ignites their passion and they set out to measure their whole world!

 I LOVE watching this happen.  

With supervision, I allow all ages of children in my school to use a real tape measure.  If this seems a bit dangerous for the personalities in your class, simply prepare to have fabric tape measures.  For obvious reasons (melting icicles) the paper variety that we use for so many other projects just wouldn't due.  

Again, this is such a fantastic opportunity to discuss numbers 1-30 and beyond in a meaningful, hands on, memory building way.  EVERY icicle was measured, again and again.  They began to melt which made this even more incredible.  

We recorded our measurements from beginning to end and observed that our smaller icicles lost almost half their size in the 20 minutes from start to finish, but that the larger ones only lost about an inch.  This confirmed their hypothesis that the larger ones would indeed melt more slowly than the larger ones.  It also gave us great conversations about half, whole, and quarter, again mixing science and math, sensory and motor skill activities.  

We had to be very careful holding the smaller icicles and we noticed that they were so cold and slippery due to the melt that they easily slipped out of our pinching fingers. 

We observed the before and after pictures we took of our icicles from above.  Everyone was SO excited to see their picture holding the GIANT icicle.  We then discussed what we thought it would become.  

From the graph above we had two schools of thought.  One - it would become water.  This hypothesis was from our older children that had experienced and remembered what melting ice turns into from our previous experiments and discussions.  Two - our younger crowd, full of hope and spunk had a dreamy vision of what the icicle might be.  

After everything melted we again looked into our measuring cups and saucers and proved the older children correct.  It was giggles and grins and a FANTASTIC way to learn about the process of a solid becoming a liquid.

That look right there....

Look at the satisfaction on his face!  This little guy LOVED the Cold Tolerance Experiment and was PROUD to proclaim that he was the toughest, oldest, and strongest dude in school!

He was determined to be the one that held out the longest.  This hunk of ice was COLD and see the position of the hand NOT holding the ice.  It says it all.  "AAARRRGGGHHH!!!  This is making ME frozen ALL OVER!"  

I began by explaining that we would count the seconds and then record them on our graph (below).  We would each take turns holding our largest icicle and before each child had his or her turn, I asked them how long they wanted to hold it.  

We recorded the results and all our little learners were delighted to participate in this mind over matter research.

This is a fun way to bring Creative Arts from these fun science experiments.  We used white tempra to mix our melted ice (water) with and created real "Ice Paint!"  The children thought this was AMAZING...they were painting with ICE!!!  

Even my little ones that usually aren't so keen on painting were "two brushes up" and ready to tackle this painting prompt.  I simply asked them to paint a picture of the day.  After we observed the blue sky and I asked, "What color do you think looks most like the outside today?"  Most of our babes chose the blue construction paper to represent the blue sky outside.  A few decided on green and we even had a pink (outside of the box thinkers!)

We then proceeded to imagine and record from our mind the way the icicles looked hanging from the roof of the house.  This was the result!