In the Den we seem to have been hit with a case of ‘Frozen fever’ since the film Frozen came out at the cinema. There have been lots of moments in role play where ‘Elsa’ and ‘Ana’ came to play, and the children have been skating and dancing around when we listen to the Frozen CD.

To follow this interest deeper we brought in some lumps of ice, made by filling various sized and shaped containers with water and leaving them in the freezer over night. To inspire the thought that ‘Elsa did it’ we added some glitter to some of the batches.

Initially, some of the Frozen fans explored the ice and used imaginative language to explore the role that ‘Elsa’ could have had in creating this ice inside the Den. Then the children explored the ice through touching it with their hands and talking about what it feels like and what they would like to do with it. Some children knew that eventually it would melt and decided to hurry the process along by blowing on it and hitting it with various ‘tools’, such as chop-sticks, mini saws, sticks, paintbrushes, spatulas and even a wooden sword.

There was lots of discussion and turn taking involved as the children negotiated the best method to break the ice. One child wanted to pick the ice up and drop it. There was a cheer of approval when this method worked to shatter the ice to pieces.

The language explored included “it’s cracking”, “it’s melting”, “look, it’s all sparkly”, “shiny”, “it’s like diamonds”, “my sword is stronger”, “chop”, “hit it harder”, “it’s water now”. These are just a few examples as there were so many comments it was difficult to write them all down.

This turned out to be a great language activity as well as an exploratory opportunity and originated from the children’s interest. It is also an easy to organise activity that could be tried at home. You could even freeze objects inside the ice for children to explore how they can get the objects out.

Lucy