DIY Mini Ice Skating Rink

Since we aren’t getting quite enough of the cold weather lately, we decided to bring the outdoors in! Actually, this experiment was partly to see how quickly the water would freeze, and partly because I had a long conversation with Beckett recently about ice skating.

Or rather, he asked me a million questions about ice skating (a lot were repeated), and then told me he wished his ‘guys’ could go ice skating.

Supermom made that happen.

I poured water in a pan and left it on our front porch to freeze. It only took 4 or 5 hours, and then it popped right out of the pan and I transferred it to a wax paper-lined cookie sheet. The absolute only reason I lined it with wax paper was so it would look prettier in photos.

I don’t know if you will believe this next sentence, but Beckett played with this thing for 2 straight hours, paused for about 10 minutes, and then played with it for another 45 minutes while we sat around the table eating dinner. He couldn’t be bothered to eat just then…

Here are some other ideas for this if you decide to make one:

• Squirt some food coloring in the water
• Submerge some toys in the water to excavate as it melts
• Try carving the ice with a spoon
• Squirt a few small drops of liquid watercolor on top of the rink and finger (or brush) paint on the ice
• Flavor the ice with some vanilla or other flavoring. (Every few minutes Beckett was licking or slurping the ice.)
• Experiment with dipping a spoon into hot water for a little bit and pressing it into the ice to see it melt.