This week in Cohort A we did a science experiment activity called "blizzard in a bottle". The idea was to mix water, paint, and baby oil, and then drop in an alka-selzter tablet and watch it make bubbles and "snowflakes". We collected empty plastic bottles during the week to use for this experiment. The reason I chose this activity is because I've noticed that the kids love to watch how different substances react with one another, and they especially enjoy watching them fizz and erupt. My favourite part of sharing science experiments with the kids is watching their reactions and hearing them guess what will happen. During this experiment, one child guessed that "when you add the baby oil, it won't actually mix with the water but it will sit on top", and they were right!

The original experiment only used white paint, to appear more blizzard-like, but I let the kids choose whatever colour they wanted and that lead to some very colourful bottle-blizzards! Once they added the alka-selzter tablets and watched it fizz, they were very curious as to what would happen if they shook the bottle and mixed all the substances together. One child exclaimed; "I want to make it as fizzy as possible and have a really crazy blizzard!" And that's just what they did.

Another child was curious about how the mixture would look when poured out into a cup, and they all agreed that it kind of looked like coloured milk! It was very cool to see the texture of the "blizzard", and how it changed as it was being poured.

The children enjoyed playing with their bottled concoctions for the rest of the afternoon and were very excited that they got to take them home and show their families what they made. We all agreed that next time we try it, we will use more alka-selzter tablets to see just how fizzy we can make it, maybe we can even make it erupt out of the bottle!
Until next time,
​- Katie

Snow in the middle of April was perfect for some spring ice building in Cohort A. We started off by designing what we would want to build with the ice bricks that were made by freezing water in loaf pans and milk cartons.
"I want to build a cabin! " said one child about their design.
"I want to do graffiti art! Does anyone want to help me?" Said another child to their friends. 

When we got outside, Cohort A immediately noticed of the colourful ice bricks and started making guesses on what they represented. "Blue is water!" said one child to another, who replied by saying "yeah, and red is fire!" they then both agreed that green was "Earth".

Some of the children started testing out different ways to stack the bricks on top of each other, while other children wanted to test out how much force it would take to smash the ice bricks. "Let's see how many bricks we can stack on top of each other" said one child to their friend who replied with "No thanks, I want to smash them instead" 

 Since the weather was a bit warmer in the afternoon, some of the children noticed that the ice was starting to melt making it really sticky. The bricks got stuck on their gloves and their shoes. "Quick! Take a picture!" said one child. holding up his hand to show that the circular ice brick was sticking to his glove. "It looks like a Captain America Shield!"  Then, they picked up a bigger ice brick to see if that would stick to his glove as well. "It is pulling my glove off!" he exclaimed.

Although the children were not able to build exactly what they wanted, they explored different ways to use the ice bricks by creating new designs and testing out the idea of force to smash ice.
Next time, we will make even more ice so that the children can build all of their big ideas they have planned!

​- Leah

​    As the snow fell down in mid-April, we decided to take advantage and make snow sculptures. Before we got started, I prompted the children with a question: If we built a big huge snowball, could you guess how tall it is? As they started to build, the children made their guess on how tall they thought they were and then we took out the meter stick to allow the children to see if we were right about their predictions.