Activities you can do at home with the kids that make science ANYTHING but boring! - An Ice Treasure Hunt

Here's something FUN for your kids over the weekend to beat the hot sunny day - An Ice Treasure Hunt! Kids loves treasure and they also loves to play in the water. This is definitely something that can keep your children occupy for a long time!

Here is what you need for this Ice Treasure Hunt:
- Ice cube tray or plastic containers
- some plastic toys that don't get damage when it get wet
- food colouring (optional)
- water
- FREEZER!

To do this activity, gather a bunch of small plastic toys and put them each in a ice-cube tray or a container. Fill it with water and put it in the freezer for about 8 hours until it is solid.

To add to the fun, you could also make a much bigger scale! (This is something you want to plan out the day before.) To do this, you will need a much bigger plastic container (Empty ice cream container will be the best).

Directions:

1. Fill the plastic container with about 25% of water. Drop in a few toys.  Freeze for a couple of hours.  
2. Remove from freezer and add about another 25% of water.  Drop toys in different areas.  Return to freezer.
3. Repeat until full.
4. Remove the ice block by running hot water over the container (be careful!) or let it sit outside for a few minutes.

Take it outside and put it on the floor or a table. Provide some tools and some jugs with warm and hot water in them and let your children discover what's hiding in the ice!

Challenge the children to use various method to melt the ice , such as hitting the ice with hammer, pour hot water over it, put the ice under the sun, pouring salt on the ice and etc untill they collect all of their treasures.

This will definitely occupy them for a long time and it morph into a bit of a science project as they will learn to experiment with different temperatures of water and with different techniques. It was also a good way to cool off on a hot sunny weekend! Science is everywhere once you start looking for opportunities to use it.

-Grace-