Try this ice sensory activity for an easy indoor or outdoor activity! Kids love the feel of cold ice in their hands and enjoy the challenge of freeing all of the pieces of flower confetti from the ice cubes. Give this zero waste activity for kids a try today!
Flower activities aren’t just for summer, they can be enjoy year round! Here are some reasons I love this activity:
- If you don’t have flowers available outdoors, just buy a bouquet at the store!
- You can take the activity outdoors on a warm day or make it an indoor activity if the weather isn’t cooperating.
- The flower confetti adds a fun and festive touch! It’s the perfect invitation to play for New Year’s Eve, a birthday party or any other celebration!
But you don’t need a special occasion for this activity! Try it today!
Here’s what you’ll need..
Supplies:
- Whisky ice cube molds– You can use regular ice cubes.
- Flowers- It’s currently winter, so we used bouquet flowers.
- Scissors
- Fine motor tools
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RELATED: Check out Creating a Musical Forest for more sensory activities.
Here’s How We Made Them:
Step 1:
Make your flower confetti ice cubes. You can use whatever ice tray you have laying around the house or get creative and find a different ice tray shape. We love using sphere ice trays and these large square whisky ice cube trays.
Just cut some flower pieces and place about a teaspoon of flower confetti in each cube. Kids can work on their scissor skills and help with this!
Then fill up the tray with water. You will notice that all the flowers float to the top. If you want flowers dispersed throughout the ice cubes, you will need to fill a third of the tray with water and flowers and freeze it, then do this step two more times. Now you will have flowers at three different spots in the ice cube!
Step 2:
Set up the invitation to play. Just place the ice cubes in a tray or large plastic bin.
If you play with the ice cubes as soon as you take them out of the freezer, they will stick to your fingers and that can hurt! Let them sit out for a few minutes to give them time to defrost for a bit.
Step 3:
Set out warm water and fine motor tools. We’ve had this set for years and the kids still love playing with these tools!
Step 3:
Invite children to free the bits of flower confetti from the ice cubes! My kids are always up for this challenge. I swear it never gets old!
First my boys put the ice cubes directly into the warm water. The flower confetti looked so pretty floating in the bowl!
They also love using the tweezers once the ice starts to melt. This is great for both hand-eye coordination and fine motor work!
I had to switch out the water because it was getting cold. Once I added a fresh bowl of warm water, they used the grabber to transfer the water from the bowl to the tray.
We had so much fun with this activity and it kept the boys entertained for 45 minutes!
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I hope you give this ice sensory activity a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love it as much as my boys.
∼Tara
