It's Melting!

Here are some of the ways we've been exploring and experimenting with things that change from a solid state to a liquid state.  

Ice Magnets

Foaming Melting Snow Dough

This recipe includes baking soda and dish soap, so when you add a little vinegar it creates a cool bubbly, foaming effect as it melts. First we rolled the dough to make little snowmen. 

Then we added the vinegar using pipettes and watched the snowmen bubble. 

In the end, our snowmen completely melted into a foamy liquid.

The kids loved this process so much that I set out the same materials in a different center the next day. It was still fun the second time around. :) 

Ice Cube Painting

I first put a little bit of tempera paint, water, and then upside-down golf tees for handles into an ice cube tray to create this fun art process. 

Another Melting Snow Dough

We used the snow dough from our polar sensory bin for some additional melting exploration. This dough is made from corn starch, so we just added water to see what would happen. 

Cornstarch and water create such an interesting sensory experience. It feels solid when you try to grab it, but then liquefies again. 

After it was all melted, the kids wanted to see what would happen if we put the ice cube paints in the liquid.

It created a beautiful mixture of winter colors. One student said it looked like a fairy book. 

Original Melting Snowman...

I randomly pulled out this silly melting snowman kit that my son received as a gift at Christmas time. This also proved to be a popular material to explore, both to watch melt and to use as a building/molding tool. One student enjoyed stretching it out to make stringy spider webs.