Easy Peasy Sensory Fun: Ice!

What has the weather been like where you are? Last week we had a couple of hot days! It's been a cooler week this week but according to the weather report, a storm is rolling in and it will be hot hot hot for the next few days (80s and even climbing up to low 90s), just in time for the start of summer!

Here's another installment of easy peasy sensory fun! We came back from our outside time last week needing to cool off--so in addition to tying Silly Bean's hair up Bam-Bam style to cool off his head, I took out some ice from the freezer, put it on a baking sheet, and we had fun for a good hour or so!

  

At first, we just touched the ice and watched it melt, noticing that it was really cold!! After a few minutes, I pulled out the watercolors and we painted on the ice. It was pretty fun watching the colors slowly melt off and mix into each other on the cookie sheet.

For round 2, I had Silly Bean help me refill the ice cube tray and put a little counting bear in each one. After his nap, we had fun watching the ice melt and we "rescued" the little bears from the cold ice!

Unfortunately they sort of floated to the top, but we simply turned them over on the baking sheet, but ideally, they would be in the middle. You can do this with any plastic animals or figurines you have at home with whatever containers you've got at home--we also tried some ice in silicone cupcake liners and it was fun to have a different shape. I've also seen online people filling balloons and freezing to make things like "dinosaur eggs," which also looked pretty cool. The possibilities of ways of interacting with the ice are endless--we used our hands and paintbrushes, but you can also have your toddler use forks, spoons, little shovels, and you can even make up a little game of mining out the little animals! You could also add food coloring to the water before you free to switch things up a bit!