Children’s parents, carers and other family members all help shape children’s ideas about themselves and what they should do with their lives, including what would be a suitable future job for them.
A family STEM story time is an opportunity to introduce STEM careers, ideas and activities in a relaxed and enjoyable way. STEM story time also provides an opportunity to positively model how adults and children can share stories together.
Each session begins with an introduction to a STEM career and the attributes used in the job. There is then a STEM story which introduces a STEM concept or problem to the group. The session then continues with a practical activity based on the concept introduced by the story. This is designed to be completed by an adult and a child working together. They can successfully complete the challenge together, ensuring their experience of STEM is a positive one.
For this activity, you’ll invite children’s parents or carers into your setting, so they can work alongside each other.
The Not so Perfect Penguin and Little Bear’s Spring are widely available from bookshops and education suppliers.
Freeze – to turn into ice or another solid as a result of extreme cold. Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.
Frozen – to have been turned into ice as a result of extreme cold.
Melt – a solid turns into a liquid. Ice turns into water at 0 degrees Celsius.
Dissolve – a solid (salt) breaks down into tiny particles that spread out throughout the water.
Do these things before the session
To give more focus and an obvious conclusion to the activity, we put an object for the families to ‘release’ by melting the surrounding ice. If you would like the families to keep the object, you could use something like a snowflake sequin, but if the object is to be returned you could use a plastic animal or counting toy.
For the ice investigation to last about 15 minutes, you will need a block of ice about 4 to 5 cm deep. We use a silicone mould but you could use empty yoghurt pots or cups to make your ice.
If you want to make sure that your objected is trapped in the centre of your ice and is challenging to release, you might need to freeze in three stages. First, a centimetre of water at the bottom of your mould and freeze. After that, add the object and just cover that with water and freeze, Finally, add a final layer of water on top of that and freeze. If you are short of time, you don’t have to do this!
Think about:
If you have already had story times with your families you will know what works best in your setting, but if not you may want to consider:
Start the session by showing families the glaciologist poster and telling them that a glaciologist is a job that uses science. If you have already done some of the activities from the glaciologist unit, you could ask the children to explain to their families what a glaciologist does. If this is a new topic, you could ask the families if they can tell what a glaciologist does by looking at the photograph on the poster.
Tell everyone that for this activity, they are going to be like glaciologists.
You can explain that a glaciologist is a scientist who studies glaciers. Glaciers are huge lump of ice found in mountains or near the poles which move slowly towards the sea. Glaciologists are interested in how the ice is formed, how it moves and how it melts.
Introduce these attributes by telling the families that attributes are personal skills or qualities that we already have, or can develop.
You could tell them that glaciologists are:
Curious because they want to know more about how the ice in glaciers moves.
Observant as they watch the ice carefully to see how it is moving and changing.
Resilient because they need to be able work in cold and windy conditions and they need to be quick to recover and get back out in the cold again each day.
During the activity, the children and adults might also be able to identify where they are using these attributes.
You know the families in your setting and the best way to read a story to them, but to help we have designed these STEM focused questions for The Not so Perfect Penguin or Little Bear’s Spring to use alongside the questioning you would usually use when reading a story.
Show the glaciologist poster again and use the attributes in the activity explanation. You could tell the families that they are going to be:
Curious like glaciologists and find out how ice melts.
Observant like glaciologists and watch what happens when you try different ways to melt the ice.
Resilient like glaciologist because the ice won’t melt straight away.
Explain families that they need to melt the ice to release the object. Tell them they have warm water, salt and hand warmers (if you are using these) to help them.
Describe how they need to work sensibly, carefully and safely like glaciologists. They should keep the ice in the trays or bowls, and use the pipettes for the water, and small amounts of salt so they can observe what is happening to the ice. If they are using the handwarmers they need to use these in the trays or bowls.
You could ask the families why they think we are using warm water rather than cold water, and why we are using salt.
You could ask the families to predict which method will melt the ice the fastest.
Remind children not to taste or east the salt or ice, and not to put any of the equipment in their mouths.
Distribute the ice and ask the families to begin the task. It can be very tempting for the children to pour large quantities of water and salt onto their ice, so you may need to encourage careful, sensible and safe working.
You could use this opportunity to ask the families:
When the families have finished melting the ice and have retrieved their objects, you could ask them which method they thought was best for melting the ice and why.
You could remind the families of the attributes: being curious by investigating the quickest way to rescue something from the ice, observing what happened when they used water, salt and hand warmers to melt the ice and being resilient like a glaciologist, you kept going until you melted the ice.
There is a STEM at home activity linked to this activity. This includes more STEM careers information and other ice melting activities for the whole family to try at home.
You could tell the families that if they have enjoyed today’s activity, maybe they could be glaciologists in the future.
This section is for your information. It’s intended to be useful background – you’re welcome to include it in the session, but we expect you’d more commonly draw on it when children or their families have questions.
The molecules in water are constantly moving. When the water temperature reaches around 0°C, the molecules movement slows down. The molecules are closer together and weak bonds can form between them. They form a solid that we call ice.
When ice is heated, the molecules start to vibrate more vigorously. As the temperature of the water rises above 0°C the movement of the molecules is enough to break the bonds between them and liquid water forms.
Warmer water contains molecules that are moving faster. The water molecules will bump into the molecules in the ice and transfer some of their energy. This makes the ice melt faster than if colder water was used.
The salt makes it harder for the water molecules to bond together to form solid ice. This means that salt lowers the freezing point of water. When we add salt to the ice cube, it means that it is easier for the molecules to break apart and for the ice to melt.
Civil engineer family story time