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!