Unexpected

We love playing outdoors in the winter. Compared to the warmer seasons our winter walks are shorter as is our total time outdoors but we still manage to spend 1-2 hours playing outdoors everyday.

In the winter there are no ‘toys’ in the yard – most break easily in the cold. Of course we still have sticks, pots, and the ultimate loose part – SNOW! I also routinely make various ice blocks for building, collecting and sorting. It is the perfect activity for frigid cold winters.

With the addition of liquid watercolour paint to the water before freezing these blocks add a nice pop of colour to the yard. Sometimes I freeze dozens of trays full of coloured ice cubes and scatter them all over the yard. It is best done just before a snowfall because the children love hunting and digging for ‘gems’.

This year I decided to make some bigger ice blocks using both ice cream pails and square containers. I imagined the children may enjoy using them for stepping stones – they love the slippery spots in the yard. I also figured with bigger blocks they could build bigger structures than they could with small ice blocks. The gross motor skills required for manipulating the large blocks would be a bonus.

The result was unexpected. The combination of the large containers and the above normal January temperatures meant the blocks took longer to freeze – I expected that. What I didn’t expect was that the liquid watercolour would separate from the water during freezing and even disappear completely!

Only four of the ten blocks remained intact when I removed them from the containers. The other ones were fragile because they were hollow! That was certainly unexpected and why it happened I do not know.

The centers of these hollow ice blocks were not wet and any colour that remained was a fine powdery texture. It was like, once the liquid watercolour paint separated from the tap water, the liquid part of the paint evaporated. How that was possible confuses me – the tops of all the blocks are solid thick ice – the bottoms are the thin delicate parts that shatter when touched to reveal the hollow centers.

Well that was unexpected and I still wanted some usable ice blocks so I filled all the containers with water again. I decided to not use any liquid water colour paint this time but I wanted something to make the ice blocks stand out a little in the snow. I found an old bag of potpourri and tossed a few pieces in each bucket. Interestingly, the next day the water had turned a nice shade of red,

However, after four days outside, in the shade, in January, there is only a thin partial layer of ice on the surface of each bucket of water. How is it possible that in Manitoba I cannot freeze water outside in January?

That is unexpected.

Painted Snow

We’ve got a perfect amount of snow in the yard – enough so we can make piles and sculp and climb but not so much that we don’t have any open space left.  During our daily outdoor play time the preschoolers have packed well-defined trails through the yard.

The school age children rarely have enough time to play outdoors and they had not been out in the yard since the snow began to accumulate.  They were amazed – they are taller now.  They don’t have to step up onto the logs (can’t find some of the logs). Sitting on the benches is a different experience too.

Yesterday I decided to bring out some liguid watercolor.  Our previous experiences with this product – which you can read about here – were somewhat disappoining.  However, on the white snow the watercolors are vivid.

I was expecting the children to do more ‘art’ and create pictures with the paint.  Instead, they were more focused on ‘science’ using the liquid to make ice on the slope of the little hill so it was slipperier for sliding on.  They like to use the old cookie sheets for this;

There was some more science going on in the corner of the yard too as two young girls dug a hole in which to mix their colours in;

Then they mixed it up to create little clumps of coloured snow which they called ‘gems’.

And of course the children saved all their running and jumping energy for when we came back inside 🙂

Weekly Wrap-up

It has been a busy week and for the most part it has gone by quickly.  The early start to the day (five children arrive before 6:50 am) has limited my writing and prep time in the morning.  However, the cats are quite enjoying having so much company first thing in the morning — then the baby arrives and they do this;

We’re still working on ‘be gentle’ so at this point a hug looks more like a bodyslam.  The garden flowers probably wish they could run away too;

The older children make a daily trip around the yard to collect spiderwebs to add to ‘soup’ and building projects.  I’ll admit it makes a good glue but I don’t like the web ball collections;

The girls’ favorite ‘toy’ has been a dead bee that they found.  Each day they build homes for it;

They made sure it had a pillow for its bed;

They love that it is “so soft and fuzzy”.  Together they go on many adventures;

We’ve done some art projects indoors;

And outside we painted the wood pieces from the loose parts area;

They created some wonderful designs – I was impressed by this color blending done by a four year old;

It is just tempra paint and this wood stays outdoors so I’m not sure how long these designs will last but they are beautiful;

Temporary or permanent these paintings will add some colour to the building projects and if the paint fades or washes away we can paint them again. 🙂