Make some frozen letters and use them to play with the alphabet in a fun, sensory way (sneaking in a little learning on the side!)
) which can be both frozen and cooked, therefore making them perfect for making ice and cookies to explore the alphabet with! The girls and I mixed up some coloured water using food colouring, and poured it into the trays ready for freezing.
After being checked on approximately once an hour by a very excited Cakie, the letters were finally ready to pop out and play with! We put them on large sheets of paper so that when they inevitably melted, they could create some liquid watercolour art at the same time.
They recognised some letter names and sounds, but mainly enjoyed using them to stack, sort and build alphabet ice towers. Through play they discovered that they could carefully stand them up on end and that they were both slippery one moment and sticking to each other the next.
As they were playing on paper it was easy to throw in a little learning opportunity, by writing letters and small words to match the ice letters to. Letter matching is an early literacy skill, which is great for pracistiing in a fun way before any formal letter learning takes place.
When the sun came out we took them outside and played ice fishing using a net and a bowl of water! As she scooped them out Cakie tried to name each one and to recognise whether or not it came from her name. She had to be quick as they melted quickly!
Further questions and ways to play:
- play “spot the letter” by choosing one for your child to pick out
- find the letters from their name
- match letters to written words
- find initial letter sounds to match objects e.g. here is a cup, can you find the letter sound that starts with?
- letter snap game- freeze 2 sets of letters and match them all up! make them different colours for more of a challenge
What else could you create? We have a few things planned!
See also our Alphabet Crayons made with the same moulds!
You can browse the ABC archives here for dozens more ideas!
I am going to have to get me a set of those ice trays!
Can you get these moulds in lower case? They look fab, are ther available on line?
Kind regards
Claire
Wonderful – I need those trays.
Do you have the link for these trays?
I love this! I’m a teacher and now a stay at home mom for now. Where can we get these trays.
Fantastic idea! I want to get some of these trays. Learning the letters of the alphabet should be fun and this sounds like a great activity. I’d love to freeze the letters with regular water or juice and add them to my children’s drinks every day. A daily review of the letter names!
Ooooo, this looks like fun! I hadn’t thought of freezing letters. Thanks for the great post.
Love this too! Way more fun than mostly using magnetic letters in play.
What a great way to fun with Ice AND the Alphabet! Brilliant. Can we “order” some for our next playdate with you?!
Maggy
I LOVE this idea. Brilliant!
What a great idea! Can tell us where you found those molds? Thanks for sharing the post
oh fantastic! I need to do something else with those moulds!