Ice Melting & Smashing

While Megan was napping today, Amelia and I played outside with ice in an attempt to stay cool.  Last weekend, she helped me freeze the ice in a plastic storage bin.  Amelia loved dropping small toys in, stirring them up with the ice cubes, and then trying to catch them again with the spoon.  We added the colored ice cubes right before the big tub went in the deep freeze, to try to keep the colors from melting too much, but we ended up with a mostly greenish blob of ice, so that part didn't work as planned.  We also mixed up some colored water in margarine and yogurt tubs, and froze those separately.  Ideas from The Picky Apple and Counting Coconuts.

Today we got the ice out of the freezer and played around with it on the driveway.  First we built towers with different colored blocks of ice.  Just wetting the small blocks and holding them on the large blocks made them stick together.  Amelia didn't like that as much as I did - I think her hands got too cold.  Then we tried to figure out how to get all the toys out of the big block of ice.  First we tried pouring some warm water on it, then we put some salt on a part of it (the poor frozen boy), then we kicked it down the driveway into direct sun, but all of those things worked too slowly for us.  Next we got out some of Daddy's hammers, and we attacked that block of ice.  Fun!  And finally, we got out the hose, and sprayed that block of ice until there was nothing left.

I think the ice looked pretty interesting as it was melting (Amelia thought I was crazy)

Megan did not take an afternoon nap again today, so she was a cranky pants at dinner.  Isn't she too young to be giving up her morning nap?