Frozen Ice Toy Project

I have mentioned my friend Stacey, here on the blog before. When we went to California just recently, they are the family we stayed with.  We first met them when they were childless and living in Tallahassee.  Her husband, Adam, is an engineer and surfs. And ya’ll know my husband is an engineer and surfs.  So it was love at first site for Peter.  They have been fast friends ever since and me and Stacey are peas in a pod too.  She is uber laid back and calm, a good fit to my craziness.  


Also a good fit for her wild child, Kalen, who just turned 4.  I saw this idea on a blog somewhere, I can’t remember now, sorry!  And I thought, oh man, that is exactly the kind of thing Kalen would get a kick out of and sent it to her.


She took pictures and wanted to share with you here!  P.S.  Stacey works for Petunia Pickle Bottom and all the cool PPB stuff I give away on the blog is because of her, so make sure you give her lots of comment love and maybe she will send something new to giveaway soon!!

And with that, take it away, Stacey!

As a mom of a son, I find it more difficult to do projects with him at home.  He just doesn’t have the attention span to sit.  If we try to color, he wants to break the crayons. If we paint, he wants to put paint over the entire house.  If we bake, he wants to eat the dough before the flour and water are even mixed….so when I saw this idea, I knew it was just perfect for my son – who loves to destroy things.

First you freeze toys into water at different intervals.  I took a large ziploc storage container that I already had and filled it up 1/3 of the way and placed toys in and let freeze.

I repeated this until the the container was full – it took a full day to freeze, so you need to plan ahead if you want to do this project.

We got Kalen set up with his safety glasses and hammer.  I ran some warm water over the whole container and the ice piece just lifted out nicely.

Then I let him whack away!

Here he has decided to throw some pieces since he doesn’t have the patience to try to break it open with the hammer – make sure you warn them about windows if this happens.

Back to the hammer.

and Ta-Da – all the toys have been recovered! It took Kalen about 10 minutes to get all his toys out.

Thanks for sharing Stacey!  This is a perfect thing to do at home with a crazy preschooler.  I am tempted to try this with Penelope but maybe in a smaller container so she can just throw it in smaller chunks, I am thinking she is not ready for a hammer yet!  This could be a cool home school project too, teaching about the chemical properties of freezing and thawing water.