Hot Day Ice Play!

The Summer Sun has been beating down on us lately so we have had the perfect opportunity for some ice play. Lots of sensory fun with a sneaky bit of learning too!!

I filled some containers with plastic Sea Creatures covered them in water and added some blue food colouring for the Sea feel! They took about 24 hours to freeze so you need to be organised for this one. 

We filled our toddler pool with water and popped our Sea Creature Ice Blocks in. 

Master E was very excited, he kept trying to scoop up the whole ice block with his net. Lots of discussion about temperate occurred as he was keen to hold the ice, but wouldn't for too long as it was "Too Cold!" He enjoyed trying to get the animals out of the ice one by one.

Since the day was so warm the ice melted quite quickly leaving lots of Sea Creatures swimming around in the pool ready to be caught in nets. We spent quiet a bit of time identifying various creatures and counting how many we could scoop up in the nets.

This ice play was lots of fun and I have been busy freezing some other creations ready for some more Ice Play soon!

Treasure Hunting (for pegs)!!!

My Cheeky Monkey's absolutely love clothes pegs and since we are in the lead up to Easter I thought we might need a bit of hunting practice. This was a really quick and easy activity to set up ( I quickly hid approx 30 clothes pegs around our undercover area of the backyard for Master E and Miss M to collect all while they watched an episode of Peppa Pig!)

So here is what we had 2 buckets (1 for each monkey) and lots of clothes pegs.

Since Miss M is only 18 months and Master E is 2.5years I made sure not to make the hiding too difficult.

Some more of our hidden pegs!

As soon as Master E walked out the back door he commented  "ohhhh Mummy Pegs." So I gave him and Miss M a bucket and set them off.

There was lots of talking about on and off when they moved the pegs. Lots of under and on top of. Some sharing also occurred when Master E realised Miss M didn't have many pegs he helped her find some and then gave her some of his own!

Pegs were in the most unusual places!

Of course the pegs had to go for a ride in the back of the bike.

Found some more on the gate.

And in the garden!

Once we had collected all the pegs it led to a discussion about who had more and we had to do a quick count, followed by some colour sorting.

Our simple Treasure Hunt ended up being a bit of a Maths Lesson with lots of directional words used, some counting and sorting. Not bad for having fun!!!