10 Ways to Play with Water and Ice {Sensory Summer}

 Water Balloons:
So my girls have never played with water balloons before because the choking factor freaks me out a little bit, but I decided to give it a try this week and keep a close eye on Miss Aubrey. I grabbed a pack of these Water Balloons from Target and goodness gracious the inventor of Bunch O’ Balloons is a genius! It was seriously amazing being able to fill 20 balloons in 5 seconds. They squirted each other a bit, but mostly had fun smashing them on the ground while I quickly picked up all the pieces so Aubrey didn’t try to eat them 😉

Water & Ice Kitchen:
Next, I used food coloring to make lots of colored water which I froze in different shaped ice cube molds. I threw all of the frozen shapes into our water filled bin with play dishes and the girls made all kinds of delicious concoctions for me to taste.

 Icy Alphabet Soup:
For this activity I froze alphabet beads in ice cube trays and dumped them in our water bin.  The girls scooped, mixed and watched as the letters slowly melted into their alphabet soup.

 Ice Castles:
This was definitely the girls favorite activity of the week. If you have princess fans in your house they will LOVE pretending with these frozen ice castles. First I froze water in sand castle molds overnight. Then we added our small princess toys and the girls loved every minute of it!

 Ice Painting:
After we were a little tired of playing with princesses, I added some liquid watercolors and paintbrushes to our bin and we painted the castles before they melted down too much.

  Ice Painting:
For some more painting fun I made colored ice cubes with Jello! I didn’t want to use liquid watercoloring because I knew the girls would be tempted to taste them.  I mixed 1 cup water with 1 packet of Jello, then froze them in trays with popsicle sticks for handles. Then I taped a sheet of butcher paper on the ground and let the girls paint and taste away! Lots of sticky messy fun that smelled amazing!

 Color Mixing:
For our color mixing activity, I set up cups with a rainbow of colored water.  This activity didn’t last long before all the water was brown, but the girls enjoyed the dumping and scooping the water even after all the pretty colors were gone.

Car Wash:
This was a close second for favorite activity of the week. We needed to clean up our sensory bin and patio from all the color play anyways so this made a perfect ending activity. I filled our bin with fresh water, sponges, scrub brushes, and soap. Then I turned out hose on low and the girls scrubbed and washed their Cozy Coupe Car until it was sparkling and new!