The Pony Artist's Ice Melting Experiment

"Mommy, pouring water on ice melts it."

What do you think? True or false?

The Pony Artist had spent some time working with snow on winter days here in the Southern US. The temperature was always well above thirty-two Farenheit (0 C). We decided this was a good opportunity for a science experiment . The Pony Artist did a great job of designing a procedure to test her hypothesis.

She knew immediately that our set up included an ice cube,with water added. I reminded her that we also needed an ice cube alone in a second container to be sure that the water was what made the ice melt.

I suggested that we actually make two of each set up and conduct it twice, once on the counter and once on the refrigerator. Looking back, I short circuited the  learning process slightly. It would have been better to do the experiment her way, let her see that the ice melted both ways, then perform the next experiment.

We measured the mass of each container in case we had confusion about where ice had gone later.

In the end, that was not necessary, but it was good counting and measuring practice.  

The Pony Artist checked her a set up periodically.  Eventually, she ended up with this.

She concluded that ice melts when it is warm and (liquid) water freezes when it is cold. 

Not bad for a pre-schooler! My husband's co-worker observed an adult trying to melt ice on his wind shield by throwing water on it.  

If you are interested in trying this experiment,  you can click here to download a free printable via my TPT page.

What question should the Pony Artist answer next?

Sharing at the Mom's Library 

Color Word Printable and Activities

Recently, we hit a bit of a wall with reading. When I asked my son what we needed to read, he said, "Real books." Fortunately there are plenty of great easy readers at our local library.  These books use lots of basic sight words, and repeat the tricky words and sounds, so that my child can master them within the context of that book.   Several of these books center around colors, so I developed a lesson around color words that emphasizes vowel combinations.

An activity we have loved for some time is acting out Hap Palmer's "Parade of Colors" from "Learning in Two Languages" with colored scarves from the craft store, so we started our lesson with some music.  

Next, I instructed my children to lay the scarves out all over the floor.  I handed them the black and white color word cards one at a time, and instructed them to put the correct word on the correct scarf.  A few of the vowel combinations needed some review, so we did that along the way.

When they had finished, I told them to check their work.  They matched the colored word cards to the right scarf, and double checked that the letters on each card matched.

We have done this activity twice so far, and I expect it to be useful at least once more.    Some of the books we are reading with this unit are Pete the Cat, I Love my White Shoes,  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish,  Alice in Wonderland, A Colors primer.

If you would like to give this or a similar activity a try, you are welcome to download theses simple, free color word cards.

Color Word Cards

Egg Carton Skip Counting with Printables

This activity addresses several different skills.   For kindergarten purposes, it most directly addresses the Common Core objective CCSS.Math.Content.K.CC.B.4 ,  Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities;connect counting to cardinality.   However, it is also preparation for multiplication, and a fine motor exercise.

Read more at Thriving STEM.

Quick, easy, Bible-centered advent calendar activity

Advent starts in one week!  Last year, I shared a simple advent calendar that I developed for my own kids. Looking at it last night, I realized that my visual skills have improved in the last year.  One more benefit of blogging!  Sorry, I took the embarrassing "before" evidence down, so you can't go look.  However, I am re-doing the post in case someone might find the content helpful.

 Here are the the themes and verses we will look at each week during the month leading up to Christmas.

Week One:  The Promises of Christmas

1.  To Abraham: Genesis 12:3, Genesis 17:19, Genesis 22: 18;  Page 56 in the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones.
2.   To David: 2 Samuel 7:16, Psalm 22; Page 116 in the Jesus Storybook Bible
3.  To Micah:  Micah 5:2, cf. Matthew 2:6
4.  To Isaiah:  Isaiah 7:10 and Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 9:1,2 and Matthew 4:15,16, Isaiah 53:4 ; Page 144 in the Jesus Story book Bible.

I like using the Jesus Sotrybook Bible for this first section of advent because Sally Lloyd-Jones does such a lovely job of tying together the themes of the Old Testament with the coming of Christ.  For the rest of the calendar, I find reading directly from Scripture alone connects well with my children.

Week Two: Songs of Christmas

1.  Elizabeth's song:  Luke 1:42-45
2.  Mary's song:  Luke 1:46-55
3.  Zacahraias's song:  Luke 1:68-79
4.  Simeon's song: Luke 2:28-32

Week Three:  Comings of Angels at Chrstimas

1. To Zacharias: Luke 1:5-24
2.  To Mary:  Lukie 1:26-38
3.  To Joseph: Matthew 1:19-25, Matthew 2:13, 19
4. To Shepherds: Luke 2:8-14

Week four: The Baby Jesus

1.  The Word: John 1:14
2. The King: Matthew 1:25, Matthew 2:11
3. The Baby: Luke 2:1-7
4.  The Savior: Luke 2:15-20

Last night I made up figures for each week, and printed four of each of the figures with one set of verses on each.  Both of my kids will get a figure to decorate if they like, then paste on their own calendar.  We will talk about one figure on each of our normal school days during calendar time.   You could also use this calendar as a basis for a weekly lesson that focuses on one of these themes each week.

My figures are super simple, (maybe I'll figure out beautiful by next year?), but they are available in the form of a free printable!  

To down load a copy of my PDF of Advent Calendar Tokens, click here.




I hope that your Christmas is full of Wonder at the Gift sent from Heaven.

Toy Car Physics! A playful unit aligned with the Next Generation Science standards

This unit was designed to give kindergarten through second grade teachers some fun ideas about how to approach the Next Generation Science Standards K-PS2-1 and K-PS2-2.  Respectively, these standards read:

Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object.

Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull.

Drawing from my background as an AP physics teacher, I used my own kids to test my projects.  We had fun, and I hope you and your students will too.  

If you would like to download the supporting documents, they are available on my Teachers pay Teachers page for free.  (Click here to go to my Teachers pay Teachers page.)

Click on the following links to learn more about how we enjoyed each activity.

Toy Car Direction Investigation

Toy Car Story Play

Toy Car Negative Acceleration Investigation Demonstration (Slowing down cars and showing my students how to do an experiment.)

Measuring Length

Toy Car Distance Investigation

If you do decide to try one of these activities, please do let me know how it went for you.  This is my first attempt at elementary unit planning, so constructive feedback is especially welcome.

Jesus calms the storm rain-maker craft

Last month, we tried to float sponges on our Sea of Galilee in basin before our lesson in the two year old room. The sponges didn't float, and neither did the children, but both were equally wet.

Here's the part of the lesson that did work like it was supposed to. We were learning about how Jesus calmed the storm. During the lesson we made lots of noise for the rain and the thunder and the waves. After the lesson we colored the clouds and make our own rain-makers using:

• plastic containers from the dollar store

• coloring picture of clouds. Here's mine.

• beads and tin foil bits to sound like rain... other things would probably work fine too. I didn't want them to try to eat beans, I had the beads on hand and they look kinda cool.

• packaging tape to make sure that the lids stayed on even if someone got curious about the beads