Kids love ice and water play, and what I love about it is that it is calming for many young children. This activity brings together sensory play and science to make a fun STEM activity for preschoolers. There are no real rules other than don’t squirt your neighbor with the water. Children can explore melting the ice with warm and cold water, explore color mixing or just the sensations of ice on their hands. When I do activities like this adding in a theme like dinosaurs is a fun tool to heighten children’s interest. It’s not required, you could do this with plain ice cubes, but tailoring activities to your student’s interests will always help get and keep them engaged.
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STEM Activity for Preschoolers
Gather your materials. You will need an ice tray or mold, and you can use this link and grab one like mine here. You will also need some pipets, water, and coloring for the water. I used food color because I am at home, but in a class, I would use liquid watercolors like these. They still aren’t 100% washable, but they are much much better than food color. Oh, and a tray, this is a must!
Start by adding the color to your ice molds and filling it up with water. Freeze. Here’s a tip, if you are using a mold that is flexible like mine, put a cutting board under it before you fill, so when you transfer it to your freezer, it doesn’t spill everywhere.
Freeze.
Once frozen, pop out those colorful dinosaurs, add some warm water, and pipets and let your little ones go to town! Even my ten year old was interested.
Our dinosaurs melted quickly under warm water.
The color mixing was fun too.
Use the pipets to pick up the water in the tray and splash it over to make new colors.
Need More Dinosaur Activities for Preschool?
Check out these that match one of my favorite dinosaur books; Rex Wrecks It!
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