Early in June one of our weekly themes was "Archeology." I had seen this super fun idea over at Counting Coconuts and decided to try it. I wasn't sure how the kids would respond since I have such a large age range (K-5th) but honestly you would have thought it was Christmas morning and I'd just given them all iPods! In fact just yesterday (a month later) one of the boys asked me when we could do the "frozen thing" again.
To make them I just froze plastic animals from Dollar Tree into three different shaped containers. I should have done it earlier in the day but of course I procrastinated and stuck them in the freezer at 10 pm so they weren't fully frozen the next morning which meant pushing back the activity to the next day. I also added food coloring and a little oil. I was hoping the oil would look bubbly once the water froze but it didn't and honestly just made more of a mess when it came to clean-up so I'd recommend leaving it out!
I put the frozen blocks in our sensory table and gave the kids little cups of flour, salt, sugar, sand, dirt, warm and cold water. They also got spoons and eye droppers. Then I let them go at it. We rotate through stations in the morning so there are usually only 2-3 at a station but I had to give out lots of reminders to stay in your own station that morning because they all kept congregating by the sensory table to "just watch." :)
Animals I used...
The mess at the end!
Actually the mess was even worse when I opened the table at the end of the day to clean it out and everything had fully melted. It was like the bottom of a really dirty river...lucky me! They don't call me the "messy teacher" for nothing :)
so fun! it sounds like a winner that I should try with my nephews!
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