Ice activities by Jean Warren

ICE

ICE QUICK STARTS

	Let your children help you make ice cubes.
	Freeze ice blocks to make an ice sculpture.
	Go ice skating.
	Make snow cones from crushed ice and juice concentrate.
	Go on an ice cicle hunt on a cold and icy day.

ICE ART

ICE PAINTING
Invite your children to try one or more of these art activities.

	Freeze tempera paints in ice cube trays with a craft stick handle. Paint with the cubes on heavy paper.
	Instead of tempera paints, freeze water tinted with food coloring in ice cube trays. Insert craft stick handles before freezing. Use for ice painting.
	Draw designs on heavy paper using water-based markers. “Paint” over the designs with plain ice cubes and watch the colors soften and blend.

FINGER SKATING

	Give your children pieces of light gray or blue paper and place a spoonful of white finger paint in the center of each paper.
	Play some waltz music; such as the Skater’s Waltz.
	Then invite your children to move their hands and fingers across their papers as if skating on ice to create finger paint designs.

ICE GAMES

ICE CUBE GUESS AND MELT

	Fill several compartments of an ice cube tray with water.
	Let your children help drop a different small object, such as a stone, a paper clip, a penny, or a pasta piece, into each of the compartments.
	Place the tray in the freezer.
	When the cubes have set, ask the children to try guessing which object is in each cube.
	Then let the children melt the cubes by pouring warm water over the top of them, to check their guesses.

PRETEND ICE SKATING

	Have your children take off their shoes and pretend to ice skate in their stocking feet on a hard floor surface.
	Have them skate fast, then skate slow.

ICE CUBE RACES

	Set out a slanted board.
	Have two children each take an ice cube and hold it up at the top of the board.
	When you say “Go”, have the children let go of their ice cubes and see which cube reaches the bottom of the board first, or which cube goes out the furthest on the floor when it gets to the bottom.

ICE LANGUAGE

I SEE WINTER
Read the following poem to your children. See if they can discover the two meanings of the word icy.

                Icy you and Icy me,
                Icy branches on each tree.
                Icy patterns on the glass,
                Icy steps we have to pass.
                Icy walks and roads galore,
                Icy wintertime once more.
                Icy vines upon the wall.
                Icy scenes, I now recall.
                                                Jean Warren

ICE SCIENCE

ICE SCULPTURE

	Place a block of ice in a dishpan.
	Put a small bowl of rock salt and a spoon close by.
	Let your children take turns spooning the rock salt on the ice.
	Wherever the rock salt touches the ice, the ice melts faster, leaving a pattern of holes in the ice.
Extended activity:
	In addition, set out three eye droppers and three small containers filled with diluted red, yellow and blue food coloring.
	Let your children drop the colors on the ice.
	As the ice melts, the colors run together and produce additional colors in the ice.

MAKING NEW COLORS

	In three ice cube trays, make ice cubes, one tinted red, one yellow and one blue, using food coloring.
	Set out clear-plastic glasses of water.
	Then let your children try making three new colors by dropping two different colored ice cubes into each glass.
	Lead them to see that mixing red and yellow makes orange, mixing red and blue makes purple, and mixing blue and yellow makes green.

ICE EXPERIMENT

	Place one ice cube in each of several small cups.
	Put the cups in various places – one in the freezer, one by a heat source, one outside, one on the snack table, and so on.
	Encourage your children to check the cubes periodically.
	Which are melting the fastest? The slowest? Why?

ICE SNACKS

JUICE POPS

	Freeze fruit juice in pop cycle cups or in an ice cube try.
	If using ice cube tray, when pops are half frozen, have your children insert small craft sticks into each cup for a handle.

ICE CREAM

	Serve ice cream bars
	Or let your children help you make your own homemade ice cream.

ICE SONGS & RHYMES

I’M A LITTLE ICE CUBE
Tune: “I’m A Little Teapot”

I’m a little ice cube, frosty and square.
I make things cold every- where.

I LOVE ICE
Tune: “Three Blind Mice”

I love ice.
I love ice.
It’s so nice.
It’s so nice.
I love to put
Ice in my drink.
I love to skate
Around the rink.
I love to play
With ice in the sink.
I love ice.
Jean Warren
© Warren Publishing House

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