Protect the Popsicle Challenge

We have been learning about weather all year in Kindergarten. We have been tracking the temperature all year and tracking in our classroom by adding a colored link attached to a temperature range so students can see patterns in our weather. We have also been tracking the weather monthly and we have been tracking weekly weather in our Weather Wednesday books. We stretched our learning more when we explored what would happen to ice in the sun and in the shade. Students made predictions and hypotheses and then we experimented by putting the ice in the sun and in the shade in four different areas. This experiment helped us when we started exploring shade structures and what would be needed to protect a popscicle from the sun. 

On May 30th, Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center came to assist the kindergartners in collaborating to build their groups shade structure. The kindergarten groups spent about an hour constructing their structures. We finished with the construction in an hour and then we went back to our classroom and talked about how the structures were made. Our next step was to test our structures. It took about 12 minutes for the control freezepop to completely melt. We then took the freezepops out of the structures and measured how much of the freezepop melted. The students had an extra recess while we all waited for the control pop to melt. Then when we were going over the results the students were able to eat their own freezepop.