One of our favourite Summer activities is ice excavations, they cost almost nothing to make and keep my children busy for hours. You can set up super simple mini excavations with lego bricks or lego people frozen in ice cubes, or bigger versions and experiment with how to melt the ice.
If you have shaped moulds you could make castles and freeze princesses or superheroes. Try using a pipette or dropper and dripping warm and cold water on the ice to see if that helps it melt faster.
We sometimes add glitter or metallic shapes to make the ice look even more appealing.
Ice Excavations for Toddlers
What you need to make an ice excavation
Shapes to freeze
Characters or lego men
Glitter – optional
Water
Salt – optional
How to make an ice excavation
Add water, glitter and your characters to a shaped mould.
Place in the freezer for a few hours.
Remove from the freezer once frozen and leave for a few minutes to melt a little bit, if you try to remove it straight away it’ll stick to your fingers so be careful!
Use a pipette or dropper to drop hot and cold water onto the ice, which melts it the fastest?
We love half freezing balloons to get a cave shape. Freezing a whole balloon filled with water to get a giant marble is also great fun.
Or how about making seasonal ice? One of our favourites is this Autumn themed version, but Summer themed ice filled with shells or Spring ice with flowers inside would also look lovely.
You could even make some fizzy ice like Science Sparks.
Ice Activities for Older Children
For older children try putting a bit of salt on the ice to see if that makes it melt faster.
Did you know salt lowers the freezing point of water and so makes ice melt? This is why people put down salt and grit when ice is expected on roads in winter, the salt stops the water freezing.
More Ice Activities
If it’s cold enough you could leave a water filled balloon outside and see if it freezes overnight.
How about making some ice decorations and hanging them from a tree?
Will you try any of our ice activity ideas?
right then off to find things to freeze!
oh that looks great fun!
Fab idea Erin would love this. Off to get a container
My girls would love this! Now I just need to find things to freeze ……
Oh my goodness – what a brilliant idea! Thankyou! At this point in the summer holidays I’m flagging slightly on the ideas front so this will keep us going a bit longer! xx
what a fantastic fun idea. Defo doing this with the kids
I love these, they used to do them at nursery and Bugs would spend ages playing with them x
Now this looks like such a fun idea! Rescue all those little things! x
This looks amazing! My two will LOVE this even though they’re a bit older x x
What a brilliant idea – I am off to gather up some toys!!
This looks great fun! Thanks for sharing
I now want to freeze everything in sight, what a fabulous idea x
What a fun idea – I especially love the thought of making ice decorations!
I’ve always wanted to do this but never actually got round to it. Looks so much fun – even for parents 🙂
What super fun ideas, when the boys were small I called them ice treasures!
I’ve never done this with the kids and it is so simple I should! Mich x
A pretty epic way of keeping the kids entertained! What a fab idea 😀
Now that looks like lots of fun!!
This is such a good idea! I’d never come across it before. I’ll definitely have to give this a go with the kids.
Oh I think I will pass this on to my friend who is a childminder she will love this.
What a great idea! We spend a great deal of time outside exploring so nature would feature heavily in ours and its a great thing to do with the children’s collections x
What a great idea! I need to free up some space in the freezer now 🙂
We do this in reception , it is very much a fun way to learn for the children
this is such a great idea i actually would love to do this with my lot
My two year old probably wont have the dexterity or patience for your big tower, but I m thinking of doing a bunch of little things in a mini muffin tin! How did you color the water to look \46quot;dirty\46quot;?
Waaooww.. this is an awesome idea. Thanks for sharing. I haven’t done anything like this with ice. Gonna try this with my kido.
I’m glad you list the various brilliant ideas.Thanks for sharing this article with us.