I have been dying to make these ice blocks with my guys forever. I found a couple of spoiled yogurt cartons in the fridge (I don’t know why, but even if it’s a day BEFORE the expiry date, I get a little freaked out.) and I needed to find a non-wasteful use for them and I have tons and tons of wikki stix. Thank goodness the temperature dropped way down low below freezing. Early in the morning, I dropped a bunch of wikki stix in the cleaned out yogurt cartons, filled them with water and let Mother Nature do her work for a few hours.
So while I made dinner, the guys became excavators. I gave them a bunch of tools, mostly different sized spoons and tongs and nothing sharp because I didn’t want anyone losing an eye. Then we dumped the ice out of the containers onto big trays. I wish I had thought to use goggles too because even with those blunt spoons they managed to chunk off a few potential eye-damagers but I am a little safety-wary and most people will be okay goggle-free.
Of course because the guys sensed my danger-radar going off, they had a blast. I was a little worried they wouldn’t like the ice because it didn’t freeze in the middle, but the guys were delighted with the hole that it created and they thought it helped make bigger ice chips. They had fun trying to see which of their toys fit in the hole.
And we even tried a candle in it and it looked quite pretty but it didn’t speed the melting because it was too tall. (Yes, this was adult supervised and the guys only got to blow it out so please don’t think I just let them play with fire.)
We tried some boiling water too (Yes, this was also supervised) and that really sped up the melting process.
And the best part was that I made dinner in relative peace. It was neat watching how determined the guys got with this activity and technically it’s a science experiment. So yay for science and yay for once for miserably cold and freezing weather. Time to go eat some more yogurt!
(PS.This was way more brilliant and mostly less-messy than the time I decided to bring snow inside.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)