Experimenting is the greatest opportunity to learn the 'what if's' and 'why's'. Recently, Mateo and I have been learning about matter: solids, liquids and gases. Freezing water, evaporating water, and working out how the clouds collect all that rain water. Mateo has since become obsessed with putting things in the freezer to see if their states will transform the way water turns to ice. We have frozen all sort of things - paper airplane's, clay balls in water - but the pinnacle of our freezing escapades has been our colored ice sculptures.
We added food coloring to water and froze it over night in random shaped containers. Mateo was so excited to find these blocks of colored ice in the morning. Voilà! - pure magic in his eyes.
We adhered the ice chunks together with salt. Mateo was amazed to find that salt melts ice.
We watched in fascination as salty little rivulets cut grooves into the ice's surface. The melted, tinted water then pooled at the bottom of each sculpture and blended together into new, more beautiful colors.
Continuing with color... While out trash picking one day, Tom and Mateo found part of an old school pencil sharpener attached to a desk dumped in a neighbor's yard. So they snagged it and spent the afternoon together sharpening colored pencils to create mounds of shavings dusted with layer upon layer of color.
Mmmmm!
(via www.transitantenna.com)
