Rain, Ice and Heat

This week the Pre-K students have been looking at weather, (rain, ice,  and heat). We first asked students “what is ice and where does it come from”? Students had many ideas.  They knew that ice happens when it was cold outside and from the freezer. We then asked students how we could make ice.  Their ideas were to put water in the freezer and outside, so we did. The next day students compared the difference between ice that was frozen inside the freezer versus ice that was frozen outside.  They noticed that the ice from the freezer was much harder than the ice that was outside, they noticed that the ice from outside had kind of melted. We asked them why this happened; they said because the freezer is really really cold and it isn’t cold outside.

Later in the week we discussed with children “what is rain and where does it come from” and  “can it rain when it's cold outside”  they had many great ideas:

Rain is water when it is done raining and makes mud- Carly

 Storm clouds come in and then comes the rain- Natalie

Rain is water.  When it stops raining it makes a rainbow- Noah

 It thunders and it lightning’s- Dakota

Rain does not fall from the sun because the sun is made of fire, it falls from the clouds - Misael

Sometimes when it is kind of cold and kind of warm it hails- Tessie

If it is cold it freezes, like snow and when it is warm it rains- Kosmo 

After students had an understanding of where ice comes from and how ice can only happen when it's cold outside we decided to show them the polar opposite “how can we melt ice and how can we things melt” ? We set up two activities for students to understand out how things can melt. One with a hot plate and crayons; we had the children productions of what would happen when they put the crayons on the hot plate.  We also asked the children how they could melt the ice. They said we could hit it, we said” without hitting how can we melt ice”?  They had many great responses: 

Water is making the ice melt- Carly

 Water makes ice melt and heat melts crayons melt- Adam

 The heat is melting the crayons and when things get very cold it freezes and when things get very hot melts- Ava

Wow it drips, because it is melting-Alexa