Making homemade ice pops and studying freezing

Something entirely prompted by Sarah this week was a study of freezing and boiling... and she decided to start by asking, "Can we make our own ice popsicles?" We ended up making not only a true "ice popsicle" out of water, but also an orange juice pop, two lemonade pops and an iced tea pop.

Here are our ingredients - including popsicle sticks, press-and-seal to hold the sticks in place, and our drinks, as well as some Crummy Disposable Plastic Cups (all I had to contribute to her spur-of-the-moment idea; they made some weird-shaped pops, but they're easy to crack to get off the popsicle!)

Sarah poured the liquid into the cups (leaving room for the ice to expand); I helped her cover the tops with press-and-seal, and we cut small slits in the covers to slide the popsicle sticks through.

Into the freezer they went... and we promptly kind of forgot about them for a day or so!

In the meantime, Sarah decided to "play" with boiling water and a pan full of ice. She figured out that ice floats (and I explained why); learned why the ice cracks when you pour hot water onto it; and guessed and then experimented to see which would "win" - whether the ice would make the boiling water cold first, or the boiling water would melt the ice first.

We're lucky to have a cool-bottomed electric teapot, which allows Sarah to do things like make tea and experiment with hot water without hurting herself on the kettle!

She did all sorts of boiling-freezing-floating-sinking experiments, and we talked about why the different things happened the way they did. We also reenacted the Titanic sinking with an old spray-paint-can lid in the pot of water (THAT was something!)

All in all, she must have spent a few hours discovering new facts about the simplest thing - water - and trying to hypothesize and test what it would do in different situations. I was thrilled... and she was almost entirely self-directed, which was also neat!

 And, yes, we ate our popsicles - here's Sarah with one of the lemonade ones. They tasted pretty good! :)

Linking up today to the All Year Round Blog Party: Summer Edition.