Ice Castle

Like I mentioned it’s been chilly and beyond here in Chicago. And being stuck inside isn’t that great, but we have been taking advantage of nature’s freezer this week, trying out a TON of creative activities that involve freezing something. But the castle below might be this week’s masterpiece.

And let me tell you, this took zero talent. I raided my recycle bin to find a variety of container shapes, filled them with water and stuck them outside. (The cone shape are old snow cone sleeves). I waited over night and me and my kids gathered them in the morning, all frozen solid.

If the container was paper we just peeled it off the frozen form. For the ones in plastic we just ran them under warm water for a second and they popped right out. To attach shapes we put on some mittens and used paint brushes dipped in water to stick shapes together. This was fun to do with a family of all ages, everyone could lend a gloved hand.

I set out some diluted liquid watercolor to start.

My kids enjoyed painting the castle with the cool colors that I had laid out and made observations along the way about how colors mixed and slipped around on the ice.

After a spell, I asked them if we should make it “snow” on the castle … obviously the answer was YES!

We sprinkled some baking soda all over the castle and I set some pipettes and vinegar for them to make the castle fizz with the two most popular materials in my house. We then took it a step further by sprinkling some pop rock candy left over from stockings and then things really started to POP.

In a planned tragic twist the Ice Castle was defeated by some melting magic. My eldest quickly taught the others how to sprinkle the salt and use a pipette filled with paint to watch the color drip down the interior of the castle walls.