Icy Summer Favorites

July 28, 20211 Comment

This summer we’re recycling a few old summer favorites, but with a fresh spin on each!

The first repeat was ice pop painting, which Veronika loved last year… but she also was tempted to eat the paint popsicles! This year we solved the problem with one key twist: using food coloring (phew, edible!) instead of paint. I filled popsicle molds with water and generous amounts of food coloring, then left them to freeze overnight.

In the morning, we headed out to the patio with the pops and thick white paper. Sure enough, the food coloring made beautiful swirls of color, and the hot sun meant our efforts were quickly rewarded with smudges of “paint” on the paper.

Equally sure enough, Veronika soon requested to eat one. This year, I could tell her to go ahead! Green was her particular favorite.

Our second repeat was freeing dinosaurs, but this time from ice instead of jell-o or sand. This time, I set up an excavation site in layers, first placing a few plastic dinos in a loaf pan and then filling it halfway with water. Let freeze.

I then added a few plastic Egyptian mummies and filled the loaf pan the rest of the way with water. My little archaeologists would be able to dig down through history!

When I set this out the next morning, both kids were ecstatic. Spoons, salt, and warm water to pour helped them unearth the buried treasures. Paintbrushes, chisels, or spritz bottles would be fun, too!

Travis and Veronika ended up flipping the block of ice over, which meant we freed the dinosaurs first.

They were so proud to “discover” their first species!

The Egyptian mummies were uncovered at the end. I was impressed with the kids’ diligence and patience, sticking with the task until the last sarcophagus came free.

What are your favorite icy summer games? Please share in the comments!

Construct an Igloo

July 19, 2021Leave a comment

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What could be more perfect for cooling off in the summer than building blocks made of… ice? Freeze the “blocks” up the night before and your toddler can build their very own igloo the next morning.

To start, I filled plastic cups with water and added a bit of food coloring to each. I squirted the color in randomly (some red, some yellow, and some green) but you could have an even number of each color, a full rainbow, or even just leave the water clear! Freeze overnight.

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Veronika was immediately intrigued when I pulled the frozen cups out in the morning. Run a little bit of warm water around the outside of each cup and the ice blocks will easily slip free. I set them on a tray and it was time to build an igloo!

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We tried stacking them…

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…or just arranging them in a single layer to form a wall of ice.

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Either way, Veronika’s little toys loved to live inside their icy house. She soon had them leaping from icy rooftop to icy rooftop.

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She also loved using two forks as a tool to move the blocks around, which helped keep her fingers from getting too cold.

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If you have enough room in your freezer, consider freezing larger blocks in loaf pans instead. Or mix and match a few loaf pan rectangles with the cylinders from the cups. The only drawback to the game? One way or another the house won’t last forever, since the igloo is going to melt.

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Tin Foil River with Mini Ice Boats

June 23, 2021Leave a comment

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With summer officially here, it’s time to get out in the backyard for water play! We have so many ideas for this summer, but I started things off with a simple game for Veronika today, an idea originally spotted at Reading Confetti.

First I needed to make the boats; freeze water in the compartments of an ice cube tray, adding food coloring if desired. When the ice has just started to set, insert a toothpick into the center of each cube to be the boat’s mast.

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Once the cubes were set, I cut triangles from construction paper, and taped these to the masts for the sails.

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Veronika immediately loved these little boats, and might have been happy just to play with them, but now we needed a river!

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Take a long piece of aluminum foil and curl up both sides to form a channel down the middle. If you want to have a constant running river, you can start the garden hose and simply set place at one end of the foil.

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Veronika loves to pour from our watering can, though, so I decided to let her play the role of Mother Nature and add more water whenever the river ran dry. I set up the foil on a slightly sloped section of lawn, so as soon as the ice boats were in the water, they slipped “downstream”.

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Veronika loved watching the boats move faster and further every time she poured in more water!

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Of course this being summer, the ice bots didn’t last long. But even once the boats had melted away, she loved adding more water and playing with leftover masts and sails in the river. Your kids might want to set nature treasures afloat, too!

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Natural Ice Boats

February 17, 2021Leave a comment

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I love finding ways to make the kids marvel at the beauty of winter, even on the coldest days, and these all-natural ice boats were the perfect activity! Technically you could make the boats any time of year, but the colder it is outside, the longer your ice boats will last!

To set up, freeze water in Tupperware containers until solid. Any size container is fine, although obviously smaller ones will freeze faster and cut down on waiting time if your kids are impatient. Before freezing, I added a stick to the center of each container as the boat’s mast; hold in place with a pipe cleaner twisted around the middle until the water begins to freeze.

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Once the boats were frozen solid, it was time to set them afloat! I considered driving to the nearest pond to set them sailing in a truly all-natural location, but couldn’t think of a way to keep the ice frozen in the car. Instead, we made a “pond” on a craft tray in the snow just off our back patio!

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For sails, we attached a few leaves from an evergreen bush, a nice pop of green against all the winter white.

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The kids loved seeing the little boats sail among the sea of snow.

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Even though it was below 30 degrees, the sun was strong enough that the boats melted on the patio once we set them down. That meant this turned into a little STEM lesson at the end as we watched solid turn back to liquid. And of course there’s zero cleanup with this activity!

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Water, sticks, and leaves all went right back to nature.

Ice Jewels

January 27, 2021Leave a comment

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The next time there’s snow in the forecast, make a batch of “jewels” ahead of time so you can delight your little ones with sparkly ice treasures!

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To make the jewels, simply freeze water in the compartments of an ice cube tray and add a bit of all-natural food coloring to each. I like to fill the compartments only about half way so the colors stay separate; otherwise you risk having them splash together and result in brown gems.

When Veronika and I headed out to the back patio to explore the recent snowfall, I popped the treasures out of the ice cube tray for her.

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These are so fun to arrange in pretty patterns, as we did on the rungs of her slide. Your kids might want to make patterns along tree branches, the edge of a walkway or patio, or even just on top of the snow.

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Veronika also loved that pretty pockets of color appeared in the snow wherever she tossed them in. Then you can dig up your buried gemstones and start all over.

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Winter Bowling

January 12, 2021January 12, 2021Leave a comment

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Every season seems to have its own perfect variation on bowling, whether giant inflatable unicorns in the summer, haunted bowling in the fall, and now ice bowling in the winter!

For pins, fill water bottles about 3/4 of the way with water and let stand outside overnight to freeze (or place in your freezer if the temperature in your region doesn’t dip that low). Make sure to leave some room in the bottles for the ice to expand.

For balls, fill water balloons with water and freeze overnight. In the morning, slip off the rubber and you have perfect ice spheres to bowl with. The little balls of ice absolutely delighted both kids, so much so I worried they would just play with those and ignore the bowling completely!

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Eventually Travis loved taking tosses and rolls at our ice “pins” and seeing how many he could get with one shot.

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There’s an extra catch that makes this version of bowling harder; if you throw your ice ball too hard, it might shatter!

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Come to think of it, that fact probably added to Travis’s fun.

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Veronika didn’t seem to be a huge fan of the ice bowling, so I took her inside for a warmer and more toddler-friendly version. We emptied the ice from the bottles and simply rolled a nice big bouncy ball at empty ones.

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For a toddler, persistence is key! I showed her how to reset the pins and try again after each roll.

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We also lined up the bottles in different formations to make the game more interesting.

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And sometimes, she preferred just to sit and play with the bottle pins, which was all part of the fun!

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What’s your winter spin on bowling? Please share in the comments!

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Skating Party

January 11, 20211 Comment

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When ice cubes melt against a slippery surface like metal, they start to naturally slip and slide around. Turn that little scientific fact into a “skating party” by freezing small plastic animals in the ice ahead of time!

I filled an ice cube tray with water and then after about 2 hours, when the cubes had started to set but weren’t frozen solid, I pressed a toy animal into the top of each. A set of arctic animals fit nicely with the icy winter theme. I wish I’d had a few penguins to include, too! Let freeze completely overnight.

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At first I set these out on a plastic tray, where Veronika was immediately delighted to see favorite animals in the ice. But it quickly became apparent that we needed a metal cookie sheet for them to “skate”.

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The ice started to melt almost immediately once we made that switch, and just a gentle tap of the finger sends your animals “skating”.

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Veronika’s favorite was the snow hare, which she hopped and skated all about. Travis loved making the animals take wild skating spins across the tray.

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He also wanted to try freeing them from the ice, another oldie-but-goodie ice game.

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And we all laughed at the way the ice animals could spin and move.

In sum, a fun quick activity before even heading off to school!

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Ice Skating Rink

December 1, 2020December 2, 2020Leave a comment

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This special holiday crate from Kiwi Co. is a fantastic way to fit in a STEM activity this holiday season, whether you’re currently home-schooling, or school has gone remote once more, or you just have extra hours to fill indoors now that cold afternoons are here!

To start, Travis screwed the provided table leg pegs into bolts so that the wooden base of the skating rink stands sturdily just above the ground.

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That quickly, it was time for wires and batteries… The good stuff! Travis loved helping insert batteries into the provided case and attaching to the bottom of the table base with sticky foam. The provided motor sticks on next, and he then helped connect the wires: red to red and black to black.

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Turn the table over and add the center gear on the peg above the motor. Additional gears then slot in between this central one and the outer frame.

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The hardest part of the whole project, oddly, was the background decorations that came next. The provided snowy backdrop and trees are supposed to fit into slits in the felt, but it’s very hard to get them to stay put. This is a minor quibble, since the decor is cute but not necessary for the rink to work.

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So we moved on to the real excitement! The “skaters” are tiny felt figures (gingerbread men, penguins, and snowmen) who each slot into a metal nut. These are placed on the plastic that covers the gears, which each have magnets. So once kids switch the motor on, the gears begin to spin and the magnets on the gears are attracted to the metal of the the nuts, making those little felt figures skate around.

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Truth be told, the contraption is very temperamental and the felt figures easily snap out of their metal nut. Likewise, the magnets come off of the gears very easily, so we had to do lots of fixing and problem solving in between rounds of having the motor on. But here’s an adorable clip of the rink in motion!

I loved the way Travis quickly learned to troubleshoot these glitches. He had his head bent over the skating rink along with little sister Veronika, both of them delighting as they watched the figures snap onto the magnets to skate, then laughing at how quickly everything tumbled apart, then fixing it and starting all over.

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In sum, a great STEM project. Plus, the booklet had in-depth explanations about why ice is slippery and about precisely how the gears and magnets work to make the contraption move.

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Colored Ice Cube Bath

July 26, 2020Leave a comment

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Veronika has loved playing with ice this summer, so tonight we brought the fun inside. If she thought ice melted fast on the patio, just wait until she saw how fast it would melt in the warm bath tub!

To make everything more fun (plus more obvious visually), I froze water in the compartments of an ice cube tray with a little food coloring added to each. Dark colors like reds and blues will work better here than soft yellow.

Once Veronika was in the tub, I popped out the ice cubes one at a time. Be prepared for fast action, because that ice isn’t going to last long!

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She loved watching the food coloring swirl out into the tub as the ice melted almost instantly. She also enjoyed taking the cubes from my hand, a momentary shocking sensation of cold.

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When we had about half the ice cube tray left, I dumped them all in at once for a grand finale. This game was – obviously! – quick, but made for a joyful end to a hot day.

Ice Sandbox and Block Play

July 21, 2020Leave a comment

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The heat wave continues in our area and that means so does the icy fun. How did we play with ice today? Think boxes and blocks.

First up was an ice “sandbox”, a fantastic riff on at-home sandbox play. But this time I filled a shallow tray with crushed ice instead of sand.

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I added a few beach toys and we headed out to the back patio. From there, it was the coolest beach day ever! We decided to squeeze on food coloring for fun, but you can skip that part.

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Veronika then loved scooping through the ice with a beach shovel and using it to fill up little toy boats and sand pails.

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She also loved hopping a frog through the ice. And feeding the frog some ice! It must have been thirsty.

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But those tiny ice chips melt fast when it’s already 80 degrees at 8 a.m., so we needed something more solid. Luckily I was prepared.

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The night before, freeze water in an empty milk container. I added a few drops of blue food coloring to this one for an ocean feel, then trapped a few toys inside (an activity that the kids never tire of).

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