Toddler Science

I bought a couple of new board books over the Christmas break, books which we've owned before but which have been loved to death and needed replacing.

"Red is Best" by Kathy Stinson, and "The Snowy Day" by Ezra Jack Keats.

It was when I was reading The Snowy Day that I discovered a hole in the children's understanding. The little boy in the story puts a snowball in his pocket to save it for the morning, but when he checks, it's gone!

"Where did it go?" I ask.

Blink, blink, blink.

I point to the picture. "His pocket looks kind of wet..." I hint. Nope. Still not a clue.

Well, we need to Find Out then, don't we??

Out we go and scoop up a small tin bowl of snow. We look at it. It's white and it's cold and it's crunchy under our poking fingers. Then we sit it on the table.

Every ten minutes or so, we return to the table to look again. Well, look at that. It's not so white any more. It's getting sort of clear. And there's not so much snow in the bowl ... but there is some water. Isn't that weird?

Over the course of the next hour, we checked in at intervals as the snow shrunk. When we were down to the last little dribs of snow, I had them pick up the snow and hold it in their palms. Right there, before their very eyes, the snow turned into water!!!!

Who knew?

"So where did all the other snow go? Where's the rest of the snow in the bowl? What happened to it?"

They peer into the bowl. They look at their wet hands. They look at me, blankly. Damned if they know. Hm. I wait. It's Nora who made the connection.

"It's water! It gone at water!"

Yes, indeed. The snow all gone at water.

Hee.