Water and ice

This idea comes from two of my sisters. It originated with my sister who teaches special education and suggested to me by my sister who has two kids of her own. This apparently works really well in groups of kids as well as with just one.

My experience with this is just with my two year old.

I started by freezing a few trays of ice. We have some ice trays that make different shapes of ice and that makes it kind of fun. You can get these ice trays at the dollar store and we've gotten some from Ikea as well.

Next I put towels down on my kitchen floor.

On top of the towels I put bowls of different sizes. I filled 1 bowl with really warm water, 1 with cold water, another bowl with one tray of ice and left one empty. Any combination of warm water, cold water and ice will work, however.

I then pulled out different measuring cups and ladles and let my daughter play.

She really seemed to like the difference in temperatures. The water and ice got moved from bowl to bowl and eventually the ice melted.

That's when I brought out the next tray of ice (and the next one when that one melted).

It did leave a bit of a watery mess on our floor, even with the towels. However, our kitchen floor needed to be cleaned anyway. So it wasn't all bad.

My sister tells me that when she did this with a group of kids, some kids liked to watch the ice melt in their hands. I got the impression my daughter was just irritated the ice was cold. She didn't really seem to care the ice was there and was more interested in the water.

She did really enjoy playing with water and we will be doing this activity again with her soon.

Maybe I'll wait until the next time my kitchen floor needs to be cleaned.