Treasures in Ice

We recently read the picture book, Immi's Gift by Karin Littlewood. It is a sweet story of a little girl in the Arctic who finds a treasure while ice-fishing. The flotsam she finds brings color to her stark, white world. Later she sends off a piece of her world. We followed this up with a text-to-text connection with David Wiesner's Flotsam.

I have been scouring online for some water activities for this week's summer challenge, and ran across Counting Coconuts' frozen block of treasures. When I saw the picture it immediately reminded me of Immi's igloo. I knew I had to make one of our own! In a 9x12 glass dish I filled it with water, shells, coloful rocks, foam sea animals, letters from our family, and a large sea-star. I tried to do colored ice-cubes like Counting Coconuts but I was unsuccessful. "A" couldn't wait to "excavaute" the treasures and dropped the pan, so I don't have a whole block to show you, only pieces.-SO SAD!

From Immi's Gift

Our block isn't pretty but you get the idea!

Now that we made the block we needed to "excavate" the treasures. "A" and I thought of some things that may melt or break ice. "A" thought more about breaking by using his dinosaur excavating tools and his toy hammer. I added a water bottle, salt, and sugar to help facilitate melting. I knew all these 
items wouldn't work (sugar) but wanted "A" to try them for exploration. He said he would first try with the thing he knew wouldn't work -the water bottle. Hmm was he surprised by the results! Although he liked trying to break it we found the salt and water bottle the best at melting the ice to release our "flotsam".

Our Excavation Tools

Getting smaller now

This activity kept "A" busy for hours.

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