letters in ice: sensory play {with free alphabet chart}

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It has been cooold (understatement of the year).  I decided to bring some of the winter outside, since we have not been able to play in the snow very much.

Science Lesson: I told my son that we were going to turn liquid into a solid.  Together we filled a Ziploc bag with water and a touch of blue food coloring.  I asked him what he thought the water would turn into and he said, “ice!”

Literacy Lesson: We also added some of our plastic uppercase letters into the bag, so they would become frozen inside our “iceberg!”  I made an alphabet chart for him to place his letters on as he got them out of the ice.

Things never go as planned….

I set the bag in a bowl outside for a few hours.  To my puzzlement (is that a word?), I was shocked to see that the water had not yet frozen, though the temperature was about 5 degrees!  My husband guessed it was because the sun was beating on it, but I didn’t agree.  We let it sit overnight, and the next morning, the weirdest thing happened.  The water hardly froze at all.  There was a frail looking ice ball with the letters inside.  My guess is that the food coloring (we used this kind) we used had some type of salt in it (or other weird-o substance) that prevented it from fully freezing.  Weird.  This was fine for our purposes, but I was a bit disappointed that the letters would be so easy to get out.

Check out Stir the Wonder’s Melting Icebergs post — her ice actually melted :)

Here is John with his “iceberg.”  I set it inside a big tub, along with some squirt bottles filled with warm water, a free Alphabet Chart (download below!) so he could match the letters as he got them out, and I added some snow on top to keep things interesting.

He absolutely loved this activity and loved watching the snow and ice melt with the warm squirt bottle.I had to keep telling him to add the letters to his laminated chart, he wasn’t thrilled about this aspect of the activity, but he reluctantly did it. While John was playing with his Iceberg and Letters — May got to have her own Snow Play!  She was so excited when I set a bowl of snow on a towel on the kitchen floor.  I gave her some measuring cups and spoons and she was entertained for a long time! Sweet smile.  She is was so happy!
Then John got distracted by how much fun May was having, so he had to bring the squirt bottles over and melt all of May’s snow.  So I kept bring snow in, but didn’t realize the water was getting all over the towels and floor.  Oh well.Then back to his bin, practicing transferring with the leftover liquid.He worked with spoons and cups and bowls.  He loved this and literally played for over an hour!  A bit wet to clean up, but it is the perfect snowy-day activity!

Here are the charts I made.  These can be used for so many different activities.  You can cut them out, stamp on them, you name it.

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You can download the Uppercase Alphabet Mat here.  

And you can download a Lowercase Alphabet Mat here.

I hope you’re staying warm, we are trying to in this Polar Vortex (hilarious.)

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