Mr Wolf investigates the Gingerbread House ‘collapsibility’ test from the story of Hansel and Gretel.
After reading the story, we talked about whether a gingerbread house be a good structure to build a house out of… what, for example, would happen if it rained? The children made clever predictions about how it might ‘break’, ‘go soggy’, ‘get mushy’ and even ‘dissolve’! We then put the structure of our mini houses to the test and poured either water, milk, strawberry sauce, custard or ice cream on them to see what would happen. As correctly predicted by the children, the house that was subjected to the water and milk collapsed first (in less than a minute), with strawberry sauce lasting 8 minutes. Interestingly, the custard and ice cream lasted well over an hour. It was an afternoon of scientific thinking and a lot of fun – Well done, Reception!
