Our first week back at school during January we had an ice themed week. We discussed what ice is (frozen water) and how it changes from one state to the next (melting, freezing etc) When the kids came to school on Tuesday we discovered a terrible accident that occured in the classroom the night before. Some of our tiny plastic animal friends decided to leave their cage and go swimming but it was too cold that night and while they were swimming....the water FROZE! Now they were stuck inside the ice and we had to figure out a way to get them out! The kids were so excited about this and we had a great brainstorming session while we thought of ways to get them out. First they thought about letting the ice just sit there until it melts, then they thought of chopping it with a knife, and finally we settled on pouring hot water over the top to heat up the ice and make it melt since the sun wasn't warm enough that day. They had fun taking turns to pour water over the animals and they each got to save one of the animals as the ice started to melt!
