We all scream for ice cream!  That’s right, on the first day it’s been cold in weeks, the Tugboats made ice cream.  It was such a hit, and so easy to do!  Kristy brought us an ice cream ball, which has a large outer chamber for ice and rock salt.  There is also an inner chamber that holds your ice cream ingredients.  We were making a basic vanilla ice cream, so we used 1 pint of cream, 1/3 cup of sugar, and 1-1/2 teaspoons of vanilla.  The children helped load the outer chamber with ice and salt, then helped stir our ice cream ingredients before we poured them into the inner chamber.  With both ends tightly locked, we rolled the ball back and forth for 5 minutes together.  Singing a new song Kristy taught us last week, we each took turns rolling the ball to friends.  The recipe suggested 10 minutes of rolling, but the kiddos tired quickly of the vigorous rolling.  I played some super fun dance music and the children danced their booties off while I rolled the ball.  Fifteen minutes later, we were all tired, but our ice cream was finished!  Everyone enjoyed the extra special little treat at lunch time!

The unseasonably warm weather is making it very challenging for us to talk about the changing seasons here at Harbor City School!  We are not complaining, we love having the ability to go outside later in the year than we anticipate, but it’s hard to talk about ice formation in the winter when it’s not quite freezing outside!  We do our best, though, and the Tugboats are keeping up quite well.

Peter explored ice with the children further today by freezing more of our toys!  He used our large container that usually holds raisins, filled it with various toys and water, and stuck it in the freezer yesterday.  This morning, during free play, he dumped the large block of ice into the sensory table and let the fun begin!  The children spent the rest of the morning trying to “rescue” the toys from the giant icy beast!  Many of the children were surprised at how heavy the ice block was.  I think perhaps they were imagining the ice cubes they are more used to seeing in their own freezers.

The Tugboats tried many strategies for removing the toys from the ice.  They quickly realized that pulling was not going to be successful.  Some tried rubbing on the ice, but their little hands got cold quite quickly!  As Peter helped them flip the cube over and over, they began to see how some of the melted water in the table was helping to melt more of the ice.  Later in the morning, they attempted to hack away at the ice with hammers and other toys, which did not last long.  No one wants an ice chip in the eye!  Finally, after the slow melt had released about half of the toys, Peter demonstrated how hot water could melt the ice at a much faster rate.

They were also very interested in the features of the giant ice block.  They loved investigating the crystalline structure and all of the stripes they could see in the ice.  As it started to melt, bubbles began forming inside the ice, which was extremely exciting!  Where were those bubbles coming from?!  As it melted, they were able to find hols that led to the larger hole inside the ice, and later, see it break into large chunks.  The giant block of ice sustained their interest and curiosity longer than almost anything we’ve seen yet.  I’m sure the slow rate of melting helped a little bit!

We continued our investigation of ice today by freezing a variety of substances that are very familiar to the children: play dough, flubber, and sand.  After our discovery that ice is simply frozen water, Peter loaded up the freezer yesterday with these other items to see how they would freeze.  We brought them out for project time to check them out!

The frozen sand was the least different from its original form.  While it was noticeably colder, it still behaved as the warm sand did.  It filled up the space of the bucket, but left a messy pile on the table whether warm or frozen.  The play dough was a little more different in frozen form than it was in its warm format.  At first, the cold made it difficult to shape and mold, where the warm play dough is easy enough to bend and shape.  After some handling, the children could begin to stretch and shape the dough, but still not as easily as the warm dough.  The Flubber was the most different in its frozen form than its warm.  While regular Flubber spreads slowly over a table if it isn’t contained, the frozen Flubber maintained the shape of its container for a long time.  The frozen Flubber was also missing many of the identifying marks of warm Flubber: it didn’t splat when dropped, it thudded; it didn’t squish easily in between their fingers; and most disappointingly, it was impossible to blow it into a bubble!  The children unanimously agreed that frozen Flubber was the most boring of the frozen objects.  Who can blame them?

We also excitedly celebrated a birthday today!  Gigi’s mom came in for her classroom co-op today and brought us two special treats!  For morning snack, we made our own devilled eggs!  Ana boiled the eggs at home, and each child helped to peel his or her shell, remove the yolk, and mix the yummy goodness we put back into the egg whites.  Everyone enjoyed mixing the yolks, mayonnaise, and mustard, as we counted to 10 in English, German, and Japanese.  Almost everyone tried their devilled eggs, but most of the children decided that it wasn’t for them.  It was definitely a fun and worth-while project, though!  At lunch time, we enjoyed some delicious homemade cupcakes with a light chocolate glaze and edible jewels!  We had a great time celebrating Gigi and welcoming her to our growing club of 4-year-olds!

We are kicking off I-Week with one of the of the most identifiable I-words in our kids’ vocabularies: ice!  Peter filled the sensory bin with water and ice cubes during free play and the children quickly decided that it was way too cold to play with!  After waiting a bit and returning to check the water, our resident I-student, Isa, noticed that the ice cubes were all gone!  We talked about what it means to melt and the children saw firsthand how ice really is made up of nothing more than water.  They stuck their hands in the water and found that although the ice had melted, the water temperature was still very cold!  I think we’ll save the thermal conduction conversation for later in the week.

During project time, we did more experiments with ice: ice painting!  As usual, each child was given a letter of the week to decorate, and today we decorated our Is with ice.  Peter and the children filled an ice cube tray with water, then carefully added drops of liquid watercolor to each cube of the tray.  We put those in the freezer so that the Tugboats could use their very own ice paints later this week.  For today’s project, Kristy and Sienna made us a beautiful set of frozen watercolors that they made over the weekend.  With popsicle sticks as “brush handles,” each child was able to select his or her preferred colors and use them to paint their Is.

This project amazes me every week because even when given the same set of materials, the children still manage to create such unique and individualized works of art.  When the ice paints are fresh from the tray, they create marks similar to crayons, with areas of color and non-color.  As they melt, they mark much more like watercolor paints typically do.  Some children painted their Is quickly so as to have colorful, striated letters.  Others waited until the paints were more melted and filled in every space on their letters.  Others still used the melted watercolors to create puddles of color, leaving pockets of white.  It’s such a great opportunity for them to continue to cultivate their individual styles and expressions, while also observing and learning from one another.

We welcomed another new parent as our parent teacher today:  Antonella’s dad, John!  Typically, Antonella’s mom spends the day with us, but we were so excited to share our classroom with her dad today.  They had an in-depth conversation over some play dough about whether or not cookies have eyes and if they do, can you eat them?  It was riveting, for sure, and John was right in the thick of it!  They also enjoyed roping him into their favorite playground game, Chase The Grown-Up!  Peter and I love to have a third adult to share this game with–they can really wear us out!

Back in the classroom, we continued our exploration of the letter H by reading Homes Around the World, by Amanda Doering, which is an ABC book about different types of houses.  After we read about different types of homes, we talked about the different types of homes we each live in: single-family houses, mutli-family houses, and large apartment or condo buildings.  At first, the children were overwhelmed about drawing their houses, so we talked about houses as a collection of shapes.  Most of us drew rectangles to start and filled them in with squares for windows.  Some children added triangles for roofs, while others drew roof decks or fences or chimneys.  As they drew, Peter and I talked about the individual components of their drawings, helping to label them for later reference.  They also noticed that although we have just a few types of homes here in East Boston, around the world there are many more types of homes that we’ve never even seen.  It was a great step towards thinking about the world outside of our own.

We also took a quick break from our scholarly thinking to do a little dancing, which we all love so much!  We introduced the kids to the Hokey Pokey and they loved it!  The Hokey Pokey actually has a surprising amount of educational value for preschoolers.  First, it requires listening and following directions, which we all need a little extra practice with.  It’s also a great opportunity to model the difference between left and right, which can take a lot of getting used to for 3 and 4 year olds.  In addition, it gives the children a chance to practice generating ideas around a central category.  When the song was over this morning, we had put our hands and feet in the middle, shaken them all about, and then done the Hokey Pokey, but the Tugboats wanted more!  So they took turns coming up with different body parts that we could put in, out, and shake about.  We also talked about how some body parts are more shakable than others.  Arms, for example, are much more easily flailed than eyes or ears.  Even when we’re working our bodies, we’re still working our brains!