Icy Treasures: Freezing and Exploring Nature’s Wonders in Winter

We’ve been doing a lot of sensory activities lately involving rice, salt, sand, water beads and ice. The question I hear most often is “what do you do with it?” The beauty of sensory activities is you can do anything with it! We did an Alphabet Search in our Colored Rice, Search & Rescue in our water beads and today we froze a bit of nature in water.

You will need:
Pie Tins
Twine
Nature! – Branches, Sticks, Leaves, Flowers, Berries etc.
Water

I filled the pie tins just over halfway with water. While the little ones are putting their nature findings in the tins, I asked them questions about the process.
What is going to happen to the water if it stays outside?
How long will it take?
Does the branch float?
What does it feel like?

If you’d like to make an ice mobile, cut a piece of twine and place it in the tin. Make sure enough twine is under the water so it holds. The twine also makes a nice handle for little ones to hold up and see how the light shines through it. You can even hang them outside and watch as the sun comes out and slowly melts them!

We had different plans for our ice though.

Check on the pans over time to watch how it freezes. We got to see ours when they were half frozen. It was perfect because the branches were still sticking out of the ice a bit. Miss 4 thought it felt really cool. We talked about how the thin ice appears on the top first and the liquid turns to solid.

When they were completely frozen, I set up an ice melting station in their sensory table. I provided a pull syringe, a squeeze syringe, a turkey baster, kid’s tweezers and a small bowl of water. They started by rinsing the snow off the ice.

We felt each piece as it melted and left a cool texture and imprint. The moss was definitely the best! It was like a soft sponge.

Each piece they freed, they put in a bowl and collected. They touched, tweezed, smelled and even TASTED the pieces. Miss 4 tapped the turkey baster against the ice. She liked the sound that it made.