Winter Ice Play

to Read (

Words)

We are a big fan of Sensory play here at Learning and Exploring Through Play so entering the 31 Sensory Day challenge hosted by The Adventures of Adam was very well fitting for us and very exciting!

Todays challenge is: Ice Play

You may have seen a post from us recently where we went on a lovely Woodland Winter Walk. Little N took her wicker basket and had collected lots of Nature which we brought home to take a closer look at. We used some of it to make 'Winters Soup'. We also created a Nature Basket for our Nature table. I had also put some aside to freeze some in a large ice block.

We had:
red juicy berries, brown twigs, small brown pine cones, green pine branches, shiny holly leaves, we also had a collection of a variety of leaves.

Preparation:
Perfect time of year for containers with all the Christmas biscuits and chocolate tins. I used a Cadburys chocolate tin and placed a small bowl in the centre to create a hole to be hung. I had see the idea of the putting the hole in the center from What we do all day in their Ice Wreath post and I loved it! I put some bricks on top of the container to hold it in place and to prevent it from floating once I added water. I only put a small amount of water in to begin with and added some of the nature. I then let this set so it would hold the items in place before adding more water. I built the ice block up in stages, adding more nature as I did so too. The final layer I again only put a small amount of water over the top so parts of the pine cones, leaves and twigs were protruding.

The Activity:

The ice blocks were then placed in an under bed storage box and were ready for Little N to explore. She began by running her finger tips over the ice and across the nature that was protruding from the shiny, cold ice.

She made attempts to pull some of the items out. "It's stuck" she said.

We then played a game of finding the Nature items in the ice. I would ask her to find something and she would point to it and rub her fingers all over the melting ice.

It wasn't long before she discovered that she could pick the ice up and turn it over. There was a whole new frozen canvas of leaves, berries and twigs to explore.

Note: The possibilities are endless to freeze in ice but when selecting the materials you must also consider whether they are suitable for the children taking part in the activity and make sure it is fully supervised by an adult.