Episode Six: Ice Excavation

This idea is a bit of a favourite around our ways and for good reason. It combines one of my favourite materials to work with (ice) and the adventure of discovery.

For this idea you will need a freezable container (ice cream containers work best), some sort of child-friendly hammer, some treasure and water.

Get your children to choose out their treasure. In this instance, my middle boy was helping me so he chose two jewels for himself and two for his older brother. We put the treasure in the bottom of the container, filled it up with water and stuck it in the freezer. In about three hours you should have a solid block of ice ready to be hacked away at.

Just a few notes from experience: As you can see in our photos we had no foot or eye protection. This is up to you. In hindsight, when giving my children hammers to swing around a pair of covered shoes would probably be a good idea. Also, with all that ice being struck with the hammer, eye protection might be a good idea - even a pair of sunglasses would do the trick.

The boys had great fun smashing the ice with the hammer. Both the older and middle boy enjoyed the destruction of it all - the treasure was definitely an after thought. They were having so much fun that my baby daughter came out to see what all the fuss was about.

This is a simple, simple idea but hopefully your children will get a lot of joy out of it, as will you. Have a go chipping away at the ice with a screwdriver (or chisel) and a hammer yourself - there's something pretty satisfying about banging away at a piece of ice, flecks spraying everywhere and getting your hands wet. It's the ultimate tactile activity but there's no mess and all of the remains will melt in the sun after a few hours.

My children enjoyed this idea so much that they were still going long after I went inside to get lunch ready. Not only that, they raced back inside to choose new treasure, fill up the containers again and put them in the freezer.That is a huge sign of success in my book.

Have fun!

Episode Four: Lego Ice Skating Rink

This was a big learning experience for me and I'll explain why further on. When I was young Lego put out a themed series of sets based on a fictional ice planet. That year their catalogue featured perfectly orchestrated scenes involving Lego men trapped in ice cubes and full landscapes of glistening ice. It goes without saying that those pages sparked my imagination.

Ice is a cheap, accessible and fascinating material to work with. It is abundant as you want it to be and, as those glossy pages of the catalogue proved, it can be manipulated in many ways. Case in point: The Lego Ice Skating Rink.

I originally saw this idea on Pinterest via this blog post and thought of my Lego-obsessed boys and my own ice fascination straight away.

It's dead simple: Fill a baking dish half full of water and put it in the freezer. Then, put Lego mini figures into a ice cube tray, standing up, fill with water then freeze.

I made a few variations on these instructions and I'm sure you and your children can come up with some others. First, I stored the tray in the freezer with one end propped up on a box of Popsicles. This created an ice ramp that the figurines could use as a jump. Very cool.

Now with these instructions hopefully that's pretty self-explanatory. It does take some prep, typically the night before and this is where I came unstuck.

The lesson I learnt here, and I guess this can be applied to most of the ideas, is: preparation is not a one man job.

You see, I thought that I would save my children the wait and freeze the tray and figurines the night before. Then I could show it to them using a 'Here are some I prepared earlier' scenario. I was worried that if I showed them the idea, then told them we had to wait overnight while the water froze, they would lose interest.

In business terms I had no buy in. The kids were not interested and had no investment in the idea. In bloke terms the idea died on its arse. Here's why: the night before I had gone through their mountain of Lego choosing out various Lego figurines who I thought would feature in the ice scape. Apparently I chose wrong. That makes sense. There is no way Zurg could have happily skated next to Woody and the Octan truck driver - I should have known that.

Children don't like things sprung on them. This is why we tell them that we're leaving in ten minutes. Or let them know how long they have to play until bed time. We know that if we drop something like that on them, they start to act up. These kids were put out by the fact that this awesome activity was thrust upon them. They wanted more say in how this idea was laid out and I can't fault them for it.

Now I'm not saying you have to run every single thing you do together past them. But, when its a cool idea that will inspire play, their input can really help secure their participation.I'll be keeping this in mind moving forward.

Have fun!