Winter Fun and Game Ideas for Kids!

By escapade, on January 24th, 2008

Create Ice Spikes in your Freezer!

Want to create some really amazing ice cubes?
Try this activity!

Have you ever opened your freezer to get a few ice cubes and noticed spikes poking up from your ice cubes? Well, we did - and we were quite amazed by this finding and wanted to learn more! We’ve experimented with different types of water (tap water, distilled water, soft water, hard water), different water temperatures, and different freezer temperatures. The instructions below are what worked best for us. Have fun!

What You Will Need:

Ice Cube Tray
Distilled Water
Freezer (with temperature set to just below freezing)

What You Do:

Pour distilled water into a regular ice cube tray.
Place the ice cube tray in your freezer, with the temperature set to just below freezing. (NOTE: We found that if the freezer is set too cold, the spikes do not work as well).
Check on your ice cubes after about 1 hour. We find that about half the cubes typically form ice spikes. Pretty cool, huh?!

Variations:

Try placing your ice cube tray outside on a cold winter day. Experiment in different outdoor temperatures, and with different temperatures of water. Note what combination produced the most ice spikes.
Look for ice spikes in nature - on a pond, a lake, in a bird bath.
Try this experiment with metal ice cube trays and see if you get the same results.
Can you produce ice spikes with different liquids? Try using clear juices or carbonated sodas. What results did you get?

Escapade Et Cetera

To enhance your learning experience, listed below are links to educational websites regarding the subject matter of this activity… we’ve done the research for you!

Discovery Channel Video (http://www.exn.ca/video/?video=exn20030306-planetq.asx) – Here is a video from the Discovery Channel regarding ice spikes. A scientist explains this phenomenon and shows pictures of ice spikes.

Want More Winter Activities for Kids?

We have lots of fun indoor and outdoor winter activities for kids of all ages in our Play With Your Kids section. Here are the links to these activities:

Ice Ornaments – http://www.escapadedirect.com/wiiceor.html

Icy Bubbles - http://www.escapadedirect.com/icybubbles.html

Snow Bowling – http://www.escapadedirect.com/snowbowling.html

Track and Snow – http://www.escapadedirect.com/trackandsnow.html

Fox and Geese Game – http://www.escapadedirect.com/foxgeouwiga.html

Frozen Faces Treats – http://www.escapadedirect.com/frozenfaces.html

Indoor Snowball Fight – http://www.escapadedirect.com/insnfi.html

Marshmallow "Snow" Sculptures – http://www.escapadedirect.com/masnsc.html

Penny Hockey – http://www.escapadedirect.com/pennyhockey.html

Backyard Bird Buffet - http://www.escapadedirect.com/wibibu.html