Summer in Texas means one thing- water play! And when it’s really, really hot…we have to up our game with ice cube play! Related posts: Flower Potion Sensory Play Ocean Sensory Rice The secret recipe for getting kids to play outside 8 Simple Toys to Inspire Imaginative Play
Are you looking for an outdoor activity that entertains kids while also strengthening hands to improve fine motor skills? This colourful fizzing ice cubes experiment is perfect for kids of all ages! This summer we love to spend a lot of time outside. I’m always on the hunt for activities my kiddos will enjoy while … Continue reading "Coloured Ice Cube Surprise: A Baking Soda and Vinegar Experiment"
Ice Play is so beautiful… the possibilities are endless. Sensory play contributes in crucial ways to brain development. Think of it as “food for the brain.” Stimulating the senses sends signa…
Set up this ice excavation activity and invite your children to explore ice sensory play and see what treasures they can find! Frozen ice sensory play ideas :: ice excavation The idea behind this invitation to play is to freeze interesting items inside blocks of ice for your children to release and […]
Summer in Texas means one thing- water play! And when it’s really, really hot…we have to up our game with ice cube play! Related posts: Flower Potion Sensory Play Ocean Sensory Rice The secret recipe for getting kids to play outside 8 Simple Toys to Inspire Imaginative Play
I know there is a lot of anxiety at the moment surrounding school closures, self-isolation and the fact that many of us are going to be responsible for our children's learning for the foreseeable future. Firstly I wanted to try and relieve the pressure a bit. These are unprecedented times and this is not a normal situation! It is stressful for parents and children alike. So first we need to ensure that our children feel safe and happy. And we need to be in a place ourselves where we can be a calm and stabilising influence in these unsettling times. So do not worry about creating the perfect home-school experience. It's not realistic! Children will be learning even if you don't create an expert sequence of lessons for them. And the good news is, whatever age your children are, they can learn so much through play and everyday activities! What can I be doing to prepare? 1. Gather Ideas If you are looking for a specific idea then Pinterest will help you out no end. Make some boards and start pinning ideas to them! But if you are unsure where to begin or have very vague starting points you could find yourself scrolling for hours with little luck! I suggest you try checking out the amazing community of Instagrammers who share play ideas everyday! The Instagram play & learning community is made up of hundreds of mamas just like you, living this right now! Some share a range of activity ideas, others focus on art and crafts or sensory play. Some mama's have very young children and others share learning activities for older kids. There are too many fantastic accounts to mention here so I suggest you go and have a look at who I'm following at @inspiremyplay as a starting point. When you find some ideas that you like bookmark them! To bookmark a post on Instagram go to the symbol on the bottom right under the photo. I suggest arranging the ideas into collections to make them easier to find. eg Art & Craft, Number Activities, Sensory play etc... There are lots of companies offering resources right now or discounts to their products. To be honest I've found the avalanche of information quite overwhelming so I'm only going to suggest just one for now. Twinkl is a company that makes educational materials and has lots of activity ideas. I used their website a lot as a teacher and they are currently offering a month's free subscription for parents with the code UKTWINKLHELPS. You can sign up via their website. 2. Stock up on Supplies Now is the time to make sure you have a good selection of materials to see you through this time. Things like paper, card, paint, glue and crafty bits will be a life saver. Also start saving things from your recycling- boxes, toilet rolls and containers will be great for craft and play activities. I've put together a 'lock-down list' on my Amazon affiliate page with all our favourite supplies that I will be using during this time. You can check it out below. Amazon UK Supplies Amazon US Supplies 3. Make Some Play dough! No matter what age your kids are play dough can still be fun! It's an amazingly versatile resource and so easy to make! You can read how to make it on this post here . 4. Get the Garden Ready If you’re anything like us the garden might have been a little neglected over the winter! If you have a garden it is going to be one of your very best resources over these coming weeks. So mow the lawn, clean the trampoline and sort the outdoor toys etc.... 5. Put Away some Toys This might sound counterproductive but kids get bored of their toys quickly! We have no idea at this stage how long we might have the children at home. My suggestion is to put away some of their toys initially and then swap them over regularly. Toy rotation is a proven method for holding children's attention better and adding value to the toys they already own. 6. Think about Indoor Play and Learning Spaces We all have very different situations and amounts of space available for play and learning but here are a few things you could consider: Move furniture around to create a designated play space. If you have older children set up a desk or table where they can work and store their learning materials. Set up a space to encourage reading. A few cushions and a basket of books is all you need. Set up an art and craft area. Give children access to small amounts of each resource so they can make their own creations and work on their own projects. If you don't have space for this, see if you can't set up a box of art and craft resources that they can take to a table. How can I thrive in this time rather than just survive! 1. Look After Yourself You cannot pour from an empty cup. Make sure you are getting plenty of rest and try and make a little bit of downtime for yourself in the day. If that means snuggling up and watching a movie together, thats okay! 2. Make a daily routine Kids thrive on routine and in these times of uncertainty it’s especially helpful. What your daily routine will look like will depend on the age of your kids, individual situations & whether you’re juggling your own work at home on top. But have a rough daily routine including time for playful activities, work set by school, free play, outdoor play and strategically timed screen time. A few tips when planning a routine Finding a routine that works for you will be a bit of trial and error. Don't be disheartened if it doesn't work well first time. Be prepared to tweak it as neccessary. Children's concentration levels tend to be better in the morning so try to plan the work they find less enjoyable or harder in the morning. Don't feel you have to timetable every moment. You need breathers and so do the kids. Plan in a regular time to face time/ skype friends and family. We've chosen to do this at lunchtime as we hope there will be lots of others free to talk at this time too. Make the most of younger children's nap-times to do work with your child. 3. Get the Kids to Help This is a great opportunity to encourage the kids to do more around the house to help! Even little ones can have a few simple jobs and there's so much to learn from having a bit of responsibility. Be prepared that there is going to be more mess than usual! Make sure the kids help you with tidying up their toys and activities throughout the day. It might help you to have some 'tidy up music'. Any upbeat song will do or if you search on spotify you'll find ones that have been written specifically for tidying up. 4. Take the Pressure Off! Children will be learning whatever activities you choose to do with them, so try not to worry if your day isn't full of 'formal learning'. My suggestion would be to take a few minutes ahead of an activity to think what that learning might be and then simply make the most of these moments. If you're baking together, for example, you could get them to measure out the ingredients and read the recipe as they go. If you need to go shopping, ask them to write a shopping list with you. You could do some gardening together and talk about what plants need to grow. There's learning opportunities in everything if we look for it! Where to start with planning learning Hopefully the school that your child attends have given good guidance and provided you with some learning materials, but I know that won't be the case for everyone. In this situation I suggest you follow these simple steps. 1. Pick a theme Having a theme for the week or over two weeks will help focus your mind and also help you to search for ideas. If you're doing a search on Pinterest you'll find it much easier to find good ideas if you have a specific search term to use. You might be able to continue a theme already started by school or preschool, or you could choose a seasonal theme like Easter. Alternatively choose something that they are really interested in at the moment. You could even theme a week around a book. 2. Gather Ideas Gather ideas around the theme. They could be a mixture of art & craft activities, science or music. If you haven't been given any literacy and maths work you might want to think carefully about how to incorporate this in as well, but don't worry if it doesn't fit in exactly with the theme. No one is going to have the time to curate a perfectly themed week! 3. Adapt If you are looking after sibling groups at home, rather than having a different activity for everyone, think about how you can adapt one activity to suit them all. This will be partiularly important if you have younger sibling groups who are going to find it harder to work independently. If you keep your activites playful and practical it will be so much easier to cater for all ages. Here's an example. This week my eldest is going to be learning about counting in 2's, 5's and 10's using money (directed by school). I intend to set up a little shop role play using some of their play food items with price labels on them. My 2 year-old will just enjoy playing with the food, the shopping baskets and the till. My 4 year old can practice reading some numbers to 10 and paying for items with pennies. And my eldest will be paying for items using 2p's, 5p's and 10p's. I've only had to set up one activity that can cater for them all. Not everything you adapt will work perfectly for sure! But if it cuts down the juggling it will be worth it! 4. Make a Plan Have some idea where you're headed for the week. On a Sunday evening I intend to sit down and write a rough timetable for the week following our daily routine. But I won't be surprised or worried if I don't get it all done! Be flexible and be prepared to go off the plan if need be! If you are able to, try and have a few activities organised ahead of time. Think about preparing a few bits in the evening for the next day or first thing in the morning whilst they do some free play. Activity Ideas I thought I would go through my Instagram account and pick out some of the activities that I've found most successful. I've particularly focused on ones that work for a range of ages, since many of us will have sibling groups at home. For the suggestions that are linked to Instagram you can either view the post on Instagram by clicking on it or view the carousel of photographs in this post by clicking the arrow on the photo. Do check out my Instagram account (@inspiremyplay) for more play and learning activities. I'll be posting what we're up to in my stories and continuing to share activities on my grid. 1. Play Dough As I mentioned earlier play dough is an incredibly versatile resource and you will find it so useful during this time, if only to give you a few minutes breather! Don't forget making play dough is an activity in itself and a great opportunity to do some measuring. Find my recipe here. Play Dough Cakes Combining play dough with cupcake cases, baking trays and cutters is such a winner! There are also lots of opportunities to get some maths in there such as counting out cakes or sharing out candles onto cakes equally. Play Dough Small Worlds Challenge the kids to make a small world for an animal or figure. If you don't have lots of loose parts to hand head into the garden to collect some resources like twigs, sprigs of plants and petals. Sensory Play Dough There are so many ways you can enhance play dough to make it an amazing sensory experience. Adding grated lemon peel or lavender are just two ideas. Head to my Instagram for more inspiration. This is a fun little STEM challenge. All you need is a tray, some play dough and a marble. 2. Water Water play is universally loved by children and so great for mixed-age groups. If you want an activity that keeps them engaged for a long time water is a safe bet! Pom-Pom Water Play This is a favourite of my girls. It is great for fine motor skills and could be used for lots of great maths activities. Duplo in Water To get children playing better with their toys, often they just need them to be presented in a different way. My girls loved playing with the duplo in a tray of water. You could also do this in a bath tub or the sink. Perfumes or Potions What child doesn't like making concoctions? For this activity we collected a few petals and flowers on a nature walk. I gave them pipettes, jam jars and essential oils and they spent ages making their own perfumes. Bubble Foam A fun twist on water play- make bubble foam instead! To make bubble foam put 1 part tear free bubble bath (or washing up liquid) to 2 parts water into a bowl. We usually do 1/2 cup of bubble bath and 1 cup of water at a time. If you'd like to colour your bubble foam add a little food colouring at this stage. Mix it up using an electric hand mixer until you start to get stiff peaks and then scoop it out into a tray for play. We usually make 3 or 4 batches of different colours to fill a tray. Ice Play One of our favourite activities is to freeze objects in water and let them excavate it! All sorts of things could be frozen- here we made a mini aquarium using a pudding basin. Give them something to chip away at the ice with and warm water and salt to aid the melting process! 3. Other Sensory Play Water Beads Water beads are a lot of fun but I would advise doing them outside if you can as they do bounce everywhere! We combined them with our marble run which the girls absolutely loved! Cloud Dough This is a messy one! But lots of fun too! https://www.instagram.com/p/By0iEvPhGrQ/ For more sensory play ideas you can also check out this blog post- 10 Sensory Bases for Small World Play 4. Recycling Cardboard Box Play Make a world in a cardboard box! Recyclables in a Sensory Tray We are huge fans of rainbow rice, but unless you already have it made up it's not really an option at the moment, at least not in the UK. So bird seed makes a good sensory base instead. And adding a few boxes and tubes from your recycling for scooping and pouring couldn't be easier and is so much fun! Sticky Wall Pom-Pom Drop This is an activity that could be adapted for older children by challenging them to make a ball run of tubes to drop pom-poms down. This is a piece of sticky-back plastic (contact paper) with the sticky side facing upwards. Milk Bottle Elephants https://www.instagram.com/p/ByGQyRUBvHV/ 5. Experiments & Stem One of my 6 year-old's requests for this time at home is to do more experiments! Here's a few STEM activities that we've already enjoyed. Cloud Experiment https://www.instagram.com/p/B1RxhcahM4k/ Fizzy Experiments Have you ever tried recreating the vinegar and baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) reaction before? Basically when these two mix it results in lots of fizzing! This is great fun for setting up a potion making station or creating volcanoes! This fizzy rainbow was an adaptation we did of this reaction with frozen ice cubes. https://www.instagram.com/p/B1o9d55hf5Q/ Oobleck Gloop or oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid. This means it sometimes acts as a liquid and sometimes as solid. It's brilliant fun to explore and great for a messy play activity! https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzvxw8nhHiH/ 6. Arts & Craft Art & Craft activities are going to be such a blessing during this time! Here's just a few art and craft activities that are perfect for this time of year. Filter paper butterflies Coffee filters are such a brilliant resource. We loved making these butterflies. Swipe through the photos to see the process. https://www.instagram.com/p/Byvd9Mohirp/ Tin-foil Birds This is a great activity using resources that you're likely to already have around the house. https://www.instagram.com/p/B87Fwk0hcfJ/ Potato Printing https://www.instagram.com/p/B9Z5XxdBr0e/ Shaving Foam Art This is one to save for Easter. Shaving foam art is so easy and creates beautiful results every time! https://www.instagram.com/p/B97bI69hOzY/ 7. Garden Play We are going to be spending as much time in the garden as possible over this time. Here are some simple activities you could try. Painting with Water Small Worlds in the Garden Make a small world in a plant pot or flowerbed! Sand Cakes & Mud Pies Colour Hunt This is a great one to take on a nature walk. Just colour a piece of card with rainbow colours and then cover it with a piece of sticky-back plastic with the sticky side up. If you've found this post useful please share it with your friends and family and pin it for later reference. Thank you!
Ice can be a great tool for encouraging sensory play, especially if you have a Tuff Tray. Setting up frozen flowers sensory ice play is easy and free to do!
If you're looking for a fun summer activity that will cool your kids you have to try painting with ice! Make a batch of ice paints for your kids and let them get super creative
Cool down on a hot Summer day with these Summer Sanity Saving Ice play ideas. Each idea has some education and lots of fun!
Create an ice skating penguin small world with real ice! This fun sensory play for toddlers and preschoolers is easy to set up and great fun. If you are looking for melting experiements for toddlers, ice play or fun winter activities this penguin sensory play activity with a diy ice rink is perfect!
Whether you are hot in the summer, want to talk about arctic animals, or are leaning into a cold winter, ice play is so fun! Here are tons of ice play ideas for kids!
You will love this easy, super colorful Frozen Hands DIY. This sensory ice activity combines color mixing, science, and crafting!
Laura @inspiremyplay Founder of @inspiremyplay, Early Years teacher for 11 years and mummy to three gorgeous girls. I'm passionate about about the benefits of play in early childhood. This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and go on to make a purchase, I may receive a small commission (at no additional cost to you). Please read my disclosure policy for more details. Are you searching for fun and engaging winter-themed sensory and creative play ideas for your little ones? Look no further! This blog post is filled with easy and interactive activities that are perfect for preschoolers and young children at home or in an early years setting. From exploring winter through touch, sound, and sight, to incorporating winter themes into sensory play, these activities provide opportunities for play-based learning with the aim to support your child’s development. Get ready to have some winter fun with your little ones with these amazing sensory and creative play ideas. Frozen Bubbles This is such a magical experience to do with little ones! If you get a cold morning then it is well worth bracing the weather to blow bubbles and watch them freeze together! This works well when it’s about -2, -3C so as we have cold snap this week why not save this activity to try! Check out our blog post to find out how to do it. Frozen Pom-Poms There really is something magic about freezing things for kids to break free again! Add droppers, warm water, containers & scoops. This is great for fine motor skills and also provides opportunities for colour sorting, maths, exploring freezing and melting and lots more! Please supervise carefully. Pom-poms are a potential choking hazard to small children. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Snowflake Bubble Foam Bubble foam is always an easy win for us! On this occasion we added some snowflake cookie cutters and my little one loved exploring making and popping the bubbles! To make bubble foam simply mix roughly half a cup of bubble bath and 1 cup of water together in a blender or using a hand mixer. Spoon out the foam into a tray. If there’s any watery liquid left in the bottom give that a whisk too. I also some added scoops and bowls and sequin snowflakes that she enjoyed searching for in the foam! Once the foam disappears you can easily re-whisk it back into a foam. In fact, we actually left this in the tray for a few days then re-whisked it to use today and it was just as good as before! Winter Chickpea Sensory Bin It’s no secret that dried chickpeas are one of our favourite sensory play materials! They are so satisfying to scoop and pour (for grown-ups too!) and are a bit easier to contain than rice and other grains. They also last forever to re-use over and over. You don’t have to colour them, but it makes a fun change and it’s so easy to do! To colour dried chickpeas all you need is a bag or jar, a squirt of ready-mix tempera paint and a lined tray to lay them on to dry. You can find our step by step guide here. The chickpeas dry super quick, but if you’re in a hurry you can put them in the oven on a low heat to dry out for 5 minutes. These winter style ones will be perfect for all our seasonal play. Throw in some bowls and scoops and a poppet is great fun to fill with chickpeas too! You can buy our nesting bowl set here. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Thanks to @minimundos_demimundo on Instagram for sharing this polar inspired small world in the PlayTRAY. There’s so much to explore with this one! Save this list of bases to try sometime : Water with blue food colouring Salt Dyed blue salt, Shaving foam, Oobleck (water & cornflour) Baking soda+water (add vinegar for a fizzy reaction!) Ice Art Freezing some water in a shallow tray makes a great canvas for some process art. You can paint on the ice with regular paint, paint sticks, watercolours or dilute some food colouring and drip the colour on using droppers. Each will achieve a slightly different effect. This is a brilliant one for encouraging kids to explore and experiment and a great opportunity for some colour mixing theory too. Iceberg Sensory Bin I realise this small world isn’t geographically accurate but when your 2 year-old insists we need polar bears what can you do? I wanted to share this particular set-up to show tray play doesn’t always have to be messy! My girls had just as much fun making up little stories with this set up. To make the sea we used a batch of dyed dry pasta I used food colouring for this batch but you can find more info and alternative options on a blog post I wrote here. The iceberg is a bit of packaging painted white and I used a bit of felt for the snow. The mountains are triangles of plywood with the tops painted with acrylic paint. Ice Castles Fill containers of different shapes and sizes with water and leave outside on a cold night to freeze. Use the ice like building blocks to create a castle, using shaving foam as cement! To decorate the castles we used droppers to squeeze coloured water over it and also used paintbrushes to paint the ice. This is a messy activity but incredibly fun! If you can, wrap up warm and do it outside. Also, having a bowl of water to clean hands is also handy. Shaving Foam Arctic Small World Whenever the freezer needs clearing of frost I can’t help but want to set up a small world with it! A quick squirt of shaving foam in the bottom of our playTRAY with a tiny bit of blue food colouring swirled in made the sea and then the frost/ice was laid on top. It inevitably gets a bit messy, but actually shaving foam is pretty easy to clean up. A bowl of water nearby to wash hands is useful and children often enjoy the opportunity to do some washing up! The mountains are a quick DIY using plywood and acrylic paint. The majority of our animal figures are from Schleich, which I highly recommend. Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Animals (Amazon UK) Cotton-Wool Snow For a low mess, easy option for pretend snow try cotton-wool balls! These are really fun to set up with construction vehicles. My littlest loved loading them up and moving them around the tray and clearing the road of snow. Card Puzzles Don’t throw your Christmas cards away just yet! Why not recycle them into some DIY puzzles? Make these as simple or challenging as you like to suit your own child. Or increase the challenge gradually by cutting the pieces in half each time they complete it. Obviously this isn’t just limited to Christmas cards but is a great way of reusing them! The benefits of puzzles are numerous... problem solving, reasoning about shapes, fine motor skills and concentration to make a few. And best of all this activity takes minutes to set up and is totally free. Winter Farm My kids love a small world farm and so I thought I’d make them a wintery version in the PlayTRAY! I also wanted to show you a few quick ways to make fake snow but you could just choose one and use it for the entire tray. Icing sugar and desiccated coconut are super easy ways to make pretend snow. Mixing equal parts shaving foam and baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) is another way we love. You can also switch the shaving foam for white hair conditioner and that works well too (and smells lovely!). We made our frozen elements by sticking the PlayTRAY segments in the freezer. The frozen mud can be made using chocolate pudding mix or by mixing 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of cocoa and and 1 cup of water, before putting into the freezer for a few hours. This slowly thawed throughout the day to make a fun, messy place to play! Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon US) Shop Schleich Farm Animals (Amazon UK) Ice Skating Penguins To make skating penguins, fill a muffin tray with water and cover with tinfoil. Snap some craft sticks in half and carefully push them through the tinfoil so they are standing upright in the water. Place in the freezer overnight. In the meantime print and cut out the penguins. If you have a laminator, laminating them will give them better protection from the water. Once the water is frozen, remove the tinfoil and tape the penguins to the sticks. Remove them for the muffin tin and you are ready to play! They will glide easily over the glossy surface of the PlayTRAY lid These dancing penguins are available to download for free on our printables page here. An alternative method would be to freeze animal figures directly in the ice. Winter Woodland Play Dough One of mine & the girls favourite play dough invitations! I made this white play dough using our usual recipe and a generous amount of white icing colouring. Alongside the play dough, I put out some natural loose parts and some little trees. As well as making small worlds this is a lovely one for exploring patterns with the loose parts and making tracks in the play dough with the animals (swipe through to see pics) If you would like more info on our top small world resources check out our blog post about it. Making play dough is one of the activities in our FREE Beginners’ Guide to Sensory Play. You can download it by clicking the button below: Get your FREE ebook For more simple DIY recipes & ideas for sensory play at home download your Beginner's Guide to Sensory Play by subscribing to Inspire My Play today. Get Yours Now DIY Snow We have tried a lot of different ways of making artificial snow and this is by far our favourite! It’s so simple to make combining roughly equal amounts of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and shaving foam. It has a great texture and is cool to touch initially, just like snow! If your snow loses it’s ability to form snowballs over time you can revive it by adding a squirt more shaving foam. To fill the PlayTRAY base I used 4 cups of bicarbonate of soda and roughly 4 cups of shaving foam. In the U.K. it is pretty hard to get large bags of bicarbonate of soda in the supermarket but you can pick up KG bags of the stuff cheaply on Amazon (it’s also great for fizzy experiments so worth having a stash in the cupboard). Northern Lights A little twist on the classic nebula jar, we made some Northern Lights jars and it was so much fun! To make the forest scene I cut a piece of adhesive vinyl. If you don’t have vinyl, some black paper will do or you could even paint a forest on the jar using an acrylic paint pen. What you need: • A jar or bottle • Water • Ready mix paint • Cotton wool balls • Bio-glitter • Black paper or vinyl Method 1. Fill your jar about a quarter to a third full of water. 2. Add a generous squirt of paint and some bio glitter and mix. 3. Pull apart or unroll cotton wool balls and place them in the jar. 4. Use a paint brush or similar to press them down into the paint mixture. Keep adding more cotton wool until most of the paint has been absorbed. 5. Now add more water, choose a contrasting colour paint and repeat the process. Continue until you reach the top of the jar before replacing the lid. 6. Cut out a forest silhouette from black vinyl or paper and stick around the bottom of your jar. And that’s it! All mine were able to do this (just help with the forest scene) and each one was unique 🥰. They really are mesmerising to look at! Snow Subtraction Cloud Pom Pom Push I made this one as a visual way to explore subtraction with one of my little ones. The idea was to lay out the pom-poms on the holes and then push through the amount she was subtracting before counting how many were left. I made the cloud into a mini whiteboard with a piece of contact paper/ sticky back plastic over the top and then she was able to record her answer using a chalk pen before wiping it off. For those not ready for subtraction this is still just fun to use as a pom-pom push-it’s a great activity for strengthening little fingers (and they certainly needed it at first with some of these holes!). You could also use this for counting backwards or 1:1 correspondence-say the next number each time you push one through the hole. Winter Light Panel Play Do you own a light panel? This has been a fantastic addition to our play room For this activity I set out a collection of translucent loose parts to make snowflakes. Winter Sensory Bag This winter sensory bag is great for practising a bit of letter formation. Using a sensory approach like this should help children internalise how to form the letter more quickly as well as being more fun and appealing than pen and paper! To make the sensory bag I used hair straighteners to seal three sides of a laminating pouch, added some hair gel, food colouring and some snowflake sequins. I then sealed the final side of the laminating pouch. If you don’t have a laminating pouch or hair straighteners you can easily use a ziplock bag instead. We used ours on a light panel which worked really well but any surface with a contrasting colour would do. Frozen Penguin Eggs Children love to rescue anything frozen! One of the great positives about this activity as it takes the children a long time to do! Here's how to prepare them: 1. Blow up some balloons and let the air out again to stretch them. 2. Place your penguins inside the balloons. This can be a bit tricky but with a bit of patience you can actually get quite large animals inside. 3. Place the balloon over a tap and fill with water. 4. Tie the balloon up and place it in the freezer. Once they are frozen snip off the top of your balloon and it should be easy to peel off. I made a bit of oobleck to put in the bottom of our tray (2 cups of cornflour, 2 cups of water and a drop of food colouring). It’s not necessary but added another sensory element to it and the girls enjoyed playing with the penguins in it afterwards. I gave them spray bottles full with warm water and a little toy hammer to prize open their eggs. The beauty of this is definitely how long it takes- we got a good hours play out of this 😁 Fork Painted Polar Bears Painting with something other than a paintbrush is good fun and fork printing makes great-looking fur! We first made these last year and the girls loved it so much! Feed the Penguin Phonics This DIY game is perfect for practicing letter sounds and words! In this game, I hid the fish with letter sounds written on in a tray of cloud dough- it could easily be rice or anything else- this is just what I already had available to use. This idea was to search through the cloud dough to find the correct sound and then feed it to the penguin. You could easily switch this for words or for little ones posting poms-poms is also lots of fun! To catch the letters as they were fed to the penguin I attached a cardboard box to the back. I also made a hole for his tummy so they could see the contents! This penguin cut out and the fish are available to download here. Bead & Button Snowflakes This is such a calming & mindful process, plus the results are so beautiful! These look lovely hung up on a tree or in a window. All you need are some pipe cleaners to form the snowflake shape and a selection of buttons or beads to thread on. It’s such a great work out for little hands! 🖐 Frozen Play Dough and Wooden People I painted these little Elsa & Anna pegs for the girls to use in their play. I’m definitely not a peg painting expert but it wasn’t that hard to get something resembling the characters by using the right colours! And I think these would make a gorgeous DIY gift. You can check out the blog post here for the full details. Penguin Rescue Place little penguins (or other objects) into a tray or cake tin with water and a bit of food colouring and pop them into the freezer. Once frozen use warm water and a dropper, a spray bottle (because this is always a hit!) to help melt the ice. You can also use a spoon for chipping away at the ice and some tweezers for removing the penguins. I’ve found over the years that this type of activity is usually a winner. It can always be re-frozen and taken out again. Secret Ice Painting Have you tried this before? A little bit of table salt brushed around a cookie cutter or stencil creates a hidden picture on ice, ready to be discovered! We used watered down ready mix paint to reveal the hearts in the ice. You could switch this up for all sorts of themes! You need to be ready to do this activity straight away after prepping before the salt dissolves the ice too much. Either pop a tray of water in the freezer or leave it outside on a cold night to freeze over. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Inspire My Play ® (@inspiremyplay) Arctic Small World Backdrop Try an arctic backdrop for enhancing your small world set ups. We made this particular scene using a cardboard box. To make the icebergs, cut out circles of cardboard that get increasingly smaller. Glue them together and invite the kids to paint them white. You can download our arctic backdrop printable here.
We had fun with colored shaving cream and colored ice during our Blue week in the Color of the Week Exploration Series! This was awesomely fun messy play! I filled these star shaped candy moulds with water and a drop or two of food coloring in each one, then stuck them in the freezer for a bit. The food coloring in these will stain hands when handling, but we played with them in the bath so it diluted the food coloring enough that the boys hands weren't stained. To prevent staining though, you could use washable paint as well for these. Just make sure you use warm water when filling your ice tray so the paint dissolves. I colored the shaving cream with some blue food coloring and then dropped in the frozen blue ice stars. It turned out such a pretty blue! The boys did this messy activity right in the tub! The mess was contained and afterwards I just filled up the tub which created a very vibrant and fun BLUE BATH! To see the other blue activities we did during our Blue Themed Week, Click the photo below! More Ways to Follow the Fun!
Gracen and I are lucky enough to have one of her little friends join us for an afternoon of play each Wednesday. They play quite well together, so I put a few things out for them to explore in advance, then step back to let them play, helping communication and sharing happen when needed. We…
Kids will love having a pretend ice cream party or ice cream parlor with this easy to make play dough ice cream recipe - a great summer activity.
Ice is a wonderful material for sensory and exploratory play. Its so easy to make and you can easily add extra sensory elements like scented herbs, flavoured oils, textured natural materials and co…
Ice play makes for amazing sensory play and science learning for young kids. Check out these fun ways to play and learn with ice cubes.
Easy ice painting bin for preschoolers to explore colors on ice during a winter, snow, or arctic animal theme in the classroom or home preschool!
Amazing science for kids : ice play experiments
15+ ice play activities for kids to try any time of the year! Science, sensory, art, math, and literacy concept in icy fun messy play ideas!
We are working on Letter Q Activities this week and love anything related to "Queen Elsa" from the movie, Frozen. We've a...
Set up an easy, mess-free ice cream parlor dramatic play for toddlers using common household items. Teach colors, counting, and work on fine motor skills.
This Ice Age Bin is PERFECT for hot days (it's still super hot where we are!). Kid's find ice so fascinating and...
This hands on activity with ice will help your child learn about the properties of ice and water. See how they can learn in the outdoors and through play!
Time to Prepare: 2 minutes Freezing Time: 2 hours or overnight Ages: Toddlers to Big Kids Difficulty: Easy peasy
We got out our Arctic animals and added some ice to our play this week. This was the first set up we tried yesterday. I froze a ...
Have you ever froze Ice Jewels with your kids? They are simple to make and perfect for winter imaginary play! We started by
(learnplayimagine.com)
This easy and fun penguin ice cube slime is a simple and silly way to get some play in and do some talk about the arctic!
Rainbow Ice Tower Excavation
(learnplayimagine.com)
Make ice into art with this simple activity that is perfect for outdoor creative play.
20 fun outdoor snow and ice activities for kids. Be prepared for those snow days when school is off and kids want to go outside and play.
It's Summer at Stomping... Dig out your mother's old doilies - the children love them! Wat...
Build phonemic awareness skills in this Ice Slide Segmenting activity perfect for working on individual phonemes in cvc words.
One of my kids’ favorite sensory activities is playing with ice. Whether it be breaking dinosaurs out of ice eggs or freeing LEGO Minifigures out of glaciers,
Today is all about Frozen Sensory Play Ideas! I'm talking frozen hats, finding out what happens when you freeze oobleck, strengthening hands with frozen playdough, and so much more. And not a single Elsa or Anna in sight. Promise. Sensory play is such an important part of a child's development. It promotes fine motor skills,
Set up an easy, mess-free ice cream parlor dramatic play for toddlers using common household items. Teach colors, counting, and work on fine motor skills.
Summer in Texas means one thing- water play! And when it’s really, really hot…we have to up our game with ice cube play! Related posts: Flower Potion Sensory Play Ocean Sensory Rice The secret recipe for getting kids to play outside 8 Simple Toys to Inspire Imaginative Play
