Icy Alphabet Hunt
Well, we are working on Letter Q Activities this week and it is HARD thinking of ways to incorporate this letter. We've focused mostly on "Queen" this week, and since we love Queen Elsa who freezes things, a lot of frozen activities are coming your way. Today, I told my boys we were doing a letter review activity, but we were in big trouble because Queen Elsa froze them! My boys (ages 3 & 22 months) were both so excited when I brought out our ice covered letters with salt and warm, colored water to play with. My three said, "Wow! Elsa really froze these letters!"
Supplies:
- Plastic Letters (I bought ours at the Dollar Tree)
- Plastic Bowl
- Play Tools - hammers & screwdrivers
- Salt
- Water, mixed with food coloring or liquid watercolors
- Pipettes or Twisty Droppers
- Optional: Alphabet Paper (to match the letters - see below)
Directions:
1) Fill a bowl with water and plastic letters. Our plastic letters float, so I froze the water in three different levels. The first level is shown below. I added a little water and a few letters into a bowl and popped the bowl in the freezer for a few hours. When the water was frozen, I added the second level. More water and more letters and popped the bowl back in the freezer. And then the third level.
2) Once your letters are all frozen, remove the bowl from the freezer. The ice from the red bowl came right out when I tipped it upside down, but the pink bowl needed a little help. I held the bowl upside down and ran warm water over the bottom of the bowl until it popped out.
3) Prepare your play area. I placed a paper towel under the ice mound, so it wouldn't slide around. We added a toy hammer and screwdriver, salt and warm colored water with twisty droppers. Let your child explore in his/her own way.
Pictures & Ideas of How to Play:
My boys started working at the ice with their hammers, but this didn't work quite as planned. Keep the hammers out, because once the ice starts to melt they will come in handy!
Next, we added ice and squeezed our warm, colored water onto the ice mound. Aren't these pictures beautiful!? Note: It took some time for our ice mounds to melt. Perhaps a little too long. Next time I'll remember that "less is more" and use a smaller bowl, so the letters can come out quicker.
Once we got the first letter out, my three matched it to our alphabet paper. I helped my 22 month old find the letters and identified them for him. At this point, he thinks every letter is a Q. Haha. I put the paper in a plastic sleeve, since the letters would most likely be wet.
It took more than salt and warm, colored water to get out letters out, so I filled our pink bowl up with warm/hot water which helped melt the ice the quickest. When our mound of ice came out, it looked like the picture above. I love the science and fun hands on learning in this activity!
