Outdoor Coloured Ice Play

It's been quite cold the past few weeks so when I saw the forecast for this week was a little less cold (i.e. manageable), I wanted to do some sort of outdoor activity with Monkey. 

I am stealing this idea from the amazing ECE I work with at school. It needs to be organized at least one day before you plan on playing. 

Supplies: food colouring, balloons, various sizes plastic containers (you can also use containers from the recycling bin which is what the ECE does at school!)

Mix some water and food colouring in a pitcher or glass measuring cup.

We used about 4-5 drops of each colour. As you will see below in the pictures, this was not even close to enough. If I do it again I will use 20+ drops to ensure the colour is very bold. 

We made four different colours and poured them into all the containers. 

Then we put all the containers into the freezer. 

When Monkey's daddy got home, he helped me fill the balloons. I have a small balloon phobia so he did most of it. First we dropped food colouring into the empty balloon, then filled it with water straight from the tap. 

I put the balloons on a baking sheet and slid that into the freezer, too. 

Today, we pulled everything out of the freezer and popped it out of the containers. 

**The balloons were not completely frozen after 24 hours. We'll save them for another day!!

Then we got bundled up and headed to the backyard. 

Monkey quickly started making tunnels and bridges out of snow and using the ice to make trains and cars. 

I convinced him to try to stack them up, too, but this was not as much fun for him as it was for me. 

By far, his favourite thing to do was shove each piece down into the snow. 

We also pretended that the ice was all the different characters from his TV shows and they had an outdoor adventure. 

I didn't really want to bring all the ice back inside to the freezer so we stored it all under our barbecue (it doesn't seem to get very snowy there). If they last, we can use them again, hopefully with the balloons, too!

Mar