Saturday, January 14, 2012

Ice Balls

Our Science topic this half-term is all about changing materials. This week we explored ice. Miss Ash filled balloons with water and then put them in her freezer. Overnight the water froze solid and became ice. In class we cut off the balloons and inside we found beautiful ice balls.

We worked in groups to groups to observe and discuss what we noticed about the ice. There were different patterns, the outside was smooth and they felt cold and slippery to the touch. We sprinkled salt on our ice balls and we could hear cracking sounds. The ice melted quicker in the places where we had sprinkled the salt and when the salty water dribbled down the sides it cut a path in the ice which made the sides rough with ridges and valleys.

The next day the ice balls had completely melted and we did some shared writing based on our experience. Miss Ash collected all our ideas from the brainstorm on a big sheet of paper. Then we took turns to suggest ideas from the brainstorm to include in our shared piece of writing. We made it into this poem.

an ice dragon’s egg

glowing like a giant marble

fragile glass

streaked with bright rivers of colour

cracks tell us it’s hatching

imagine skating on its smooth surface

explosive patterns burst inside

an ice egg

from a frozen world

6 comments:

  1. There were lots of lovely patterns in.It was freezing too.from maria

    ReplyDelete
  2. I liked the different patterns that the dye made. I liked Jack's group because it looked like it had a plant inside. From Jesse.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a fun way to learn science! And I'm waiting to read the poem! Sounds very exiting!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great how all the ideas come together to make such a brilliant poem!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Karen (Lauren's Mum)January 31, 2012 at 1:31 AM

    What a fascinating piece of imagination!

    ReplyDelete