Frozen LEGO

Children love LEGO and there are always endless ways to play with it. For a bit of fun I decided to think outside the box and turn a few simple pieces and make it frozen LEGO. Such a wonderful sensory activity for children of all ages and they will come up with lots of great ways to extract the LEGO from the ice. 

Possum (almost 4 years) is a huge fan of LEGO and will happily spend quiet time making whatever pops into her head. It did, however, come as quiet a surprise to her when I presented her some LEGO, but frozen in ice! She was sure to be in for a memorable sensory experience. 

Recommended age: 2 years +
(Active supervision is required on all my activities)

Frozen LEGO

I love how simple this activity was to set up for Possum. Whilst she was sleeping I threw a few interesting LEGO pieces into a star shaped mould, added water and placed it into the freezer. That’s it, activity for the following day was all ready to go! 

Presenting the LEGO ice blocks to Possum I was interested to know what would happen next? Would she want to release the LEGO? Would she think up ways to get the LEGO out? If so, what tools would she think are best to use? These were all great questions. 

Instead she was just interested to touch them and feel how cold they were. She challenged herself to see how long she could hold one for before it got too cold to hold. She was curious about the LEGO pieces inside and asked me why I chose the ones I did. I asked her if she would like to try and get them out and we brainstormed ways of extracting them from the ice. 

Possum spent some time analysing each frozen block of ice and the position of the LEGO pieces held inside. She noticed that the warmth of her hand ‘made more water’ and melted the ice, so that was one idea of getting the LEGO pieces out, however, it was too hard to hold the pieces for too long.
Some of the ideas Possum came up with were – 

• Holding the ice to melt it
• Use a brush to wipe away the melted water
• Wrap it in a towel to keep warm
• Use a plastic knife to attempt to cut the ice

Finally, after exhausting all of Possum’s suggestions and problem solving strategies, I talked to her about the possibility of adding salt to the ice. I instructed her to pinch the gritty salt between her fingers and sprinkle it over the ice and observe what happens. Within seconds we could see the salt become wet and melt the ice surface. So interesting! Of course that threw up a whole lot of new questions. 

Would your child enjoy this icy activity? 

If you like that idea, try this – 

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