After the huge success of our science experiment the other week where we entombed Batman in ice, I thought I’d like to try another ice science experiment with my son. Picking up ice with string and salt is a classic experiment, but I thought it might be a bit dull for my son as he is only four, so I thought about what four year old’s are actually interested in and came up with this fishing for dinosaurs experiment!
For this you will need:
Small dinosaurs
Silicone muffin or cupcake liners
String
Water
Tray to pop them all in
Bowl of hot water
What we did:
Firstly, apologies for the poor quality action shot, shockingly my son kept moving and doing the experiment!
The night before I turned into stealth mama and kidnapped some small dinosaurs from my sons room. I popped them into silicone cake cases (this makes them easy to pop out later) with a bit of water in each one and put them in the freezer overnight. Before we started I popped the dinosaurs out onto a tray with some cold water on it and placed some string, salt and a bowl of hot water next to them on the table.
My son loves getting notes about his ‘missions’ and they help with his letter and word recognition so this is the one I wrote to him from a spare dinosaur.
“Help! My friends went on an adventure and they got trapped in ice! Can you rescue them and help them into a nice warm bath to warm up again? You can’t use your hands to pick up the dinosaurs but you can fish for them with some string!”
Who could turn that down?! My son was adamant that he wouldn’t be able to lift the dinosaur ice cubes just with the string but gave it a go anyway on my insistence! Didn’t work.
Next we spoke about how we had previously melted ice with different things and I told him to try using the salt. He placed the string across the icey dinos and poured some salt on top. The hard bit here for young kids is waiting, it takes just over a minite and I found that setting the timer on my phone helped.
After a miss-try from lifting too early we were able to lift the dinosaurs up just using the string and pop them into their hot bath to melt the ice. Whoop! As the salt melts the ice the water goes over the string and as the temperature cools it freezes again (just!) holding the string in place, picking up ice with string and salt and a dinosaur just for the sake of it!
You may also like:
What a great idea – I love how you personalised a classic experiment just for him! x
This is brilliant! I’m totally going to keep this idea for when my little man is a bit older. Very fun! I would love to wake up to a note for an adventure haha
Emily x
my kids love ‘rescuing’ things from ice – this activity takes it one step further with some science too! Very neat, pinned!
Thank you! x
oh what a fantastic scientific, educational, historic treat for the kids tohave hands on with , got to give this a go x
That sounds like lots of fun whilst being very educational too
What a great idea. My (9 y.o) son loves experiments with ice and I’m forever opening the freezer to get something and finding some weird contraption entombed in ice in there! I can imagine just how much your son loves this.
yay i am loving this! my little guy would find this lots of fun!
Ah, thank you 😀
What a brilliant experiment! My three would absolutely love this!
You are so clever….A great way of teaching your child by keeping him entertained as well.
This is so amazing and just thinking how much fun the kids would have.
They have done this at Aaron’s school, except it was one big huge block of ice, but it was ALSO dinosaurs. Great idea. Kids love it x
That’s very clever and I love that you put a spin on it by adding the dinosaurs. I think I would have to use cars for my son!
Anything that encourages them is a good thing!
With a toddler who has recently discovered ice cubes (joyfully for me!) I’m going to try something like this, I got some of those ‘put in water and the magically get bigger’ animals at christmas so will try and see if I can do some experimentation with those (And maybe with water beads too?!) Thanks for the inspiration!
Lauren 🙂
This was one of my boys favorite activities to do and was even better in the summer when they got hot
That’s a cool experiment, what little boy wouldn’t love this 🙂
I love that idea it’s so creative and fun! 🙂
What a simple but fab idea. I’m pretty sure my youngest would just try and bite the dinosaurs out though. Maybes something to try when he’s a bit less unpredictable!
I have to try this with the kids. So much fun!!
Such a clever idea and I love the note you left 😉
Totally going to do this during half term! Looks like lots of fun
Oh, I’m definitely going to try this one, a great expansion on the simple experiment 🙂
I love the ice ideas. What a great science experiment with young children.