Wildlife Ice Age Sensory Play
We had a go with Ice cubes when the Robot was a little bit younger and he really enjoyed it. It was cold and fun. I used squash in some of the cubes and he really enjoyed sucking at them.
However this time I have decided to have a bit of fun with his toy figures. I picked up a load of animals from a charity shop and I thought these would be perfect to create a bit of a Wildlife Ice Age.
A little bit of prep for this activity in advance is needed. You can’t make ice in 5 minutes, but you can make the cube up at nap time and stick it in the freezer for the next day. In my case though I think it was the following week.
Here’s how it’s done in bullet step by step form:
- Grab a largish container.
- Pour water in container.
- Colour water with food colouring (if you want it green like I did)
- Put animals in the water.
- Put lid on container.
- Hide container at the back of the freezer.
- Forget about container for a week.
- Have to explain to your partner why there is a moldy looking container in the freezer.
- Explain away, you are sane really.
- Put back in the freezer for a day when it’s you and the kid at home alone.
- Pull out of freezer.
- Extract large ice cube from container.
- Realise it’s not so easy.
- Defrost it slightly with a little running water.
- Tap it on the counter.
- Hand to child.
That’s it. As simple as that. Here is how we got on. First we have my spectacular green ice cube before it got in the hands of the Robot:
Last time I tried ice we just used a bowl straight onto the carpet. Now at 15 months the Robot is bit more mobile so I figured lets put the wipeable mat down and the ice in a container. That’ll work. Not. He climbed into the container with the freezing cold ice water. Mummy needed to rethink this fast.
A quick think later and I came back with a towel. Putting the ice and the Robot on the towel for him to set to work trying to get his animals out of the ice.
Now, I don’t know if you have ever worked with a 15 month old before? My advice would be don’t, they have the attention spans of gnats! There was no way this little Robot was going to sit and play with the ice while it dutifully melted enough to get the animals out. I had to entice him back with a hammer:
It worked. Well, sort of. If all else fails at the end of the day you can always try eating it while sitting in wet pants.
We enjoyed this one. We hope you did too?