Science Day - Can you stop the ice trolls melting with Mrs Peterson

We had to investigate which would be the best materials to keep our ice trolls from melting.
We chose four materials from bubble wrap, newspaper, foil and kitchen paper.  We made sure that each piece of material was the same size and took the ice trolls out of the freezer at the same time so that we could make sure it was a fair test.

It was quite tricky wrapping our little frozen trolls up in their coats and we decided that this was the part of the test that was difficult to make fair.

We talked about which material would be the best insulator to keep the trolls frozen. Most of the children predicted that the foil would be the best insulator because "it felt cold" but in the end the newspaper kept our trolls frozen for longest.  We had fun unwrapping the coats and seeing how much of our trolls had melted!

Next time you get something out from the freezer with your family have a talk about which materials would be the best insulator. Do you think the same materials could keep an object hot for a long time too?