Escape from the ice

 As part of our investigations we gave the children a selection of large blocks of ice. Each block had a small object frozen inside. First of all we wrapped the ice block in tinfoil and passed it around so that the children could describe how it felt without knowing what it actually was. We collected lots of adjectives used by the children such as cold, hard, freezing, crunchy, heavy. Then the children unwrapped it and explored how to get the objects out from the centre of it. This really fired up their imaginations, especially regarding DIY tools! We tried all kinds of things then one of the children had the bright idea of using some warm water to melt the ice. This activity provoked a lot of discussion and trying things out, testing whether their ideas worked.