We’ve played many times at putting toys and other things in ice, our Batman ice excavation is always a winner! I wanted to try something different though and this fall ice tower is great fun because it’s actually three activities in one. Really? Yes, firstly you need to go out and hunt for your materials, then you need to find the best way to pack them into the ice and thirdly you need to excavate them! There was so many things to discover in this ice tower that it actually couldn’t all be excavated in one session, making this an activity that kept my kids busy for ages!
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What You'll Find on This Page
You will need
Fall materials – we used acorns, sycamore seeds and leaves collected in the woods. Horse Chestnuts were discarded as we found them too spikey.
Plastic ‘tower’ – after a bit of experimentation I found that the plastic cartons you get soups in are perfect for this.
Water
Making your Fall Ice Tower
My kids loved collecting all the materials in the woods, I had this idea that I would be strolling round looking like something from a magazine but actually I was carrying a carrier bag from Tesco’s while the kids pretended to be characters from In The Night Garden and stuffed the bag full of stuff. Bonus, looking for pretty things made them forget how far they were walking!
Once home my son (4) helped me put all of our finds into two clean soup pots. I of course thought that mine would be far better but on defrosting his policy of just stuffing everything in actually looked far better afterwards! Soup tubs are great because you can easily put the lid back on them before they go in the freezer.
Excavating
Once the towers had frozen I gave my kids warm water, magnifying glasses and plastic tweezers to help them excavate all their finds. I let my son use salt as well but at 23 months I don’t trust my daughter with it, all kids are different and obviously some children need more supervision than others. My son enjoyed this so much that both me and my husband were told that we had to take turns excavating things too and we couldn’t get it all done in one sitting!
If your kids enjoyed this craft make sure you check out my new book 30 Halloween Crafts for Kids which is full of fun, achievable and cool ideas and make sure you bookmark this page or pin the image below so you don’t forget to try it!
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Fun Fall Activities
- Stained Glass Pumpkin Suncatcher
- Washi Tape Leaves
- Button Pumpkin Activity for Toddlers
- Leaf Suncatchers
Oh what fun. My boys loved ice treasure as we called it when they were younger.
I shall definitely have to try this with my smalls
This is so lovely and such a great activity for kids. Who doesn’t love melt ice!