With the snow season upon us, we have lots of different ways we can make use of the cold outdoors and relate our learning projects to cold-weather living. Follow along with the Babbey family and their ice cube igloo creation and use the PDF resource to gain more in-depth knowledge about igloo structures.
Day One: Take a large mixing bowl outside and collect enough clean snow to fill the bowl. Bring the bowl of snow inside and allow the snow to melt. Once the snow has completely melted, pour some of the water into a smaller mixing bowl and add one colour of food colouring (four to six drops) to the bowl and mix well. Pour into ice cube trays. Repeat for each colour. Place the ice cube trays in the freezer.
Day Two: Research igloos and have your children sketch an igloo on the TCS-Ice Cube Igloo PDF. Here are a couple of research links to get you started:
How Does an Igloo Keep You Warm – YouTube Video by Thinking Captain
Igloo Facts for Kids on Kiddle
Day Three: Collect the supplies needed for your children to build their ice cube igloos (cardboard or cutting boards, gloves, towels). Take the ice cube trays out of the freezer and begin building your igloos.
* Hint: the ice cubes stick together better if you hold them in place for a few seconds.
** If you still have access to snow, gather more to fill in the cracks. (Our snow had melted, so we didn’t have the opportunity to use more.)
I loved watching my children problem-solve and try different ways
to manipulate the melting ice cubes in order to build their igloos.
Once your children have built their igloo and you’ve taken pictures, grab a Mason jar and have them fill it with the melting ice cubes. With a permanent marker, mark a line to show the top level of the ice cubes. Ask your children to guess where the water level will be once the ice cubes have melted. Mark their guess with the permanent marker.
Day Four: Allow your children to observe how close or far away they were to guessing the water level.
This project article has been written and photographed by Katie Babbey, a homeschooling staff writer of The Canadian Schoolhouse (TCS). Enjoy more of our content from TCS contributors and staff writers by visiting our Front Door page that has content on our monthly theme and links to all our content sections.
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"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).