Snowdays are anydays

We had our first winter snowfall here in New York, so I thought it was a good time to talk about, and play with, both real snow and a  popular polymer substitute, 'Insta-snow'.

Insta-snow powder

 

 

Each child got a cup of real snow and we talked about how it looked and felt - no tasting allowed! "Cold", "wet", "white", "clumps", "melts", were among the observations made.

Adding red food color to the snow showed interesting effects - how it spread to all the particles and made colored water.

pink snowballs!

We then added WARM water to the insta-snow powder, which felt gritty at first, then EXPLODED as each particle absorbed 300x its own weight of water. This was a huge "Oooh!" moment, and plunging a hand into the 'snow' was a mindblower because it was of course warm, as well as feeling soft and slippery. Caution: spilling this on the floor makes for a slippery surface - watch out! Now we could add red food color to our insta-snow and compare the effects to the real stuff. You have to squeeze to make the color spread here, otherwise it remains inside the polymer particle.

comparing real snow with insta-snow

squeezing the color out of the polymer

many shades of red

Hours of fun followed as the children made fantastical sculptures, mixing the two different snows and generally having a creative blast!

good hands-on fun!