Ice Cube Sculptures

Welcome to the first day of the 31 Days of Play series! I’m so excited to kick off the series with a fun building activity! In today’s activity, I’m going to show you how we built ice cube sculptures!

For this activity, we first made colored ice cubes. I just colored water with food coloring and poured it into the ice cube trays. Then I left them in the freezer overnight.

Once they were frozen, I placed them all in a bowl.

Next, I gave them to my 5 year old to build with it. The trick to getting them to stick together is to squirt a little warm water on the ice and then hold another ice cube onto it for 15-20 seconds. Then they will be stuck together!

The first time we tried it, we just placed the ice on a cookie sheet. The problem was that the ice got too warm and the sculptures fell apart.

That led me to think that we needed something cold underneath to keep the sculptures together. So we started over and this time I froze a thin layer of ice on the cookie sheet.

It worked really well! I wanted to try this activity outside in the snow, like these ice sculptures, but we don’t have any snow right now! So the ice on the cookie sheet was the next best option.

Once again, we used a water dropper to squirt warm water onto the ice and then we held the ice cubes to each other until they stuck together.

You can make whatever you want with the ice cubes! That is what’s great about this activity…you get to be creative with your building!

I hope you’ll try out this easy play activity! If you want to print out directions for this activity, click here —> Ice Cube Sculptures

Have fun creating with your ice cubes! And if you are on twitter or instagram, use the hashtag #31DaysOfPlay to share your creations!