Try an ice-speriment!

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples. 
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning and setting up this activity

• Make sure the items are frozen in the ice before this session. If you don’t have a freezer at your meeting place, using insulated shopping bags, ice packs or coolers can help keep everything cold while travelling.
• Place the ice cubes in cold bowls of water, with some extra ice to keep it cold.
• People may get wet during this activity. You may wish to ask people to bring a spare change of clothes, an apron or waterproofs. You could also use bin bags or waterproof materials to protect clothing.
• Books you could read to explore water include: ‘Once Upon a Raindrop: The Story of Water’ by James Carter, ‘The Little Drop of Water’ by Rob Holmes, and ‘Water: Exploring the Elements’ by Simone Akasha Nofel.

Icebreaker Tidal Twists

1. Gather everyone together. Ask everyone if they know what ice is. It’s frozen water. Liquid water freezes and turns into a solid (ice) when the temperature is around 0°C or lower.
2. Explain that in some places on Earth, where the temperature is below freezing all the time, ice builds up in huge layers that cover large parts of the land for a long period of time. These are called ice caps or ice sheets, depending on how big they are. You can find lots of ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic. However, the Earth is getting hotter, because there’s lots of people living on it. This means the ice is melting.
3. Ask everyone why the ice melting is bad. The melting ice means there’s less ice for arctic animals, such as polar bears, to live on. The ice also turns into water and that means there’s more water in the sea. All over the world the extra water is causing sea levels to rise. This means the sea is higher than what it was. These sea levels rising means that places next to the sea, which are called coastal areas, could end up flooded or even underwater. However, communities are working hard to build flood defences and are even moving their homes further away from the coast.
4. Explain that you’re going to see what happen when ice melts and sea levels rise.
5. Ask everyone to get into groups and give each group a bowl of water that has the frozen figures in. You may want to place towels under the bowls.
6. Ask each group to measure where the water is up to with a ruler, either writing down the answer or marking it on the ruler.
7. Now, let each group try to free the frozen figures and melt the ice. Explain that they can use any of the tools or items help them, such as the pipettes. Remember to only use the water from the bowls, rather than adding any extra water in.
8. Let everyone take time to melt the cubes, making sure no-one's hands get too cold. You could let people take it in turns too and try different methods, such as stirring the water or using salt.
9. At the end, once the cubes have melted and the toys are freed, measure where the water level is up to on the ruler again. The rising water levels have happened because the ice caps melted!