Dinos in the Ice Age

In my current role as a Stay-At-Home-Mum, I can tell you that I LOVE playdates. When I have one scheduled, it is the highlight of my week. And the best kind? The ones where the kids occupy themselves happily for significant amounts of time, leaving Mummy to chat with her friends, and better yet, have some tea. 

Yes, definitely those.

To achieve that ultimate state, I'm prepared to do a bit of homework. So for a recent playmate, my friends and I hatched a plan and made these:

Icy goodness!

Yes, that's a huge ice block with dinosaurs buried in it. I made 3 and my friend made another 2. The idea was to arm the kids with tools, strip them down and let them have a go at getting all the plastic animals out. My friend even got the paddling pool out so that the kids would could have a bit of a splash, and also have water at hand to help melt the ice. (A science lesson thrown in too. Not bad huh!)

Of course this activity is made for those sweltering hot days, and not for our current wet weather. But God was kind and the sun shone for us in the morning. Enough for us to let the kids get down and dirty with the ice and water! There were meant to be six kids, but two couldn't make it, leaving the other four to try to figure out how to get the treasure.

At the group meeting, Noey decides to show brute force. Was not successful.

Little girls tap-tapping away with their spoons. They enjoyed sticking their spoons into the big crater in the middle and trying to dig stuff out. Still no bounty.

After getting some help from Mummy, some of the ice cracks! Happy children make off with some of the loot.

The two young kids decide they'd much rather play with water, leaving the two older ones to contemplate their next step.

Eventually they decide to haul the ice into the water. Noey wrestles with his block.

Naomi wonders if there's some food she's missing, what with all the spoons lying around.

Finally, a rhinoceros is out!

And we have a dinosaur!!! 

It was all good fun. And it certainly would have bought us Mums an hour of quiet time, except that we kept hanging around trying to take photographs. Hah. 

Certainly one to dig out in the hot months!

Notes:

• This isn't an original idea -- one of my friends was forwarded a link and suggested that we try it out. I would credit it except that I've lost the link!
• I intended to freeze the block in layers with dinosaurs buried in different layers, but I realised belatedly that you probably need a deep freezer to do this effectively. After putting a new layer on my already frozen first layer, the ice floated to the top of the water! So I lifted up the layer of ice and chucked the dinosaurs underneath instead, giving us two layers. 
• I also learnt that food colouring makes the ice freeze weird. All the colouring tends to gather in the centre? Guess it has a different freezing point. I never realised that!

Now, who says you don't learn something new everyday, even from planning kids' activities?