Every one loves giant ice balls right?! I make ice balls a few times a year and adapt it to suit the theme or whatever is trending at play school! The children love water whatever the weather and this is a nice extra dimension that really gets the conversation flowing…

Items you need: balloons; food colouring; syringe; water; patience

For this batch our theme for the week had been colours. We had been having a stretch of particularly hot weather so the giant ice balls suited the occasion perfectly! The initial reaction had been delight coupled with a lot of shrieking and shivering – they were freezing! As the children got braver they held them, rolled them and passed them around – all the while chatting and expressing their findings. They loved holding them and studying the beautiful bubble designs.

As the ice balls started melting the colours started to mix and this provided a further opportunity to discuss the different colours and what was happening. For other themes I have frozen plastic insects, dinosaur fossils, glitter, beads etc. This is an activity that needs to be closely supervised.