The Summer Olympic Games are heating up! Try cooling off with a fun way to get your toddler excited about the games with a science experiment.

This activity is easy to set up and keeps your toddlers attention for a long time.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Flowers (you could use other things for the rings)
• Water
• Container
• Freezer
• Ice
• Brushes

For this one, you have to do a little preplanning.

The night before you want to do this activity, it has to be frozen. I used an old Tupperware container and filled it with water. Then, I added colored flowers that matched the Olympic Rings to the container.

To keep the flowers in place, I filled the containers lid and put something heavy on it in the freezer.

It ended up looking like this…

Next, I poured a little bit of table salt into a jar and got some brushes out too. To help the melt, I also gave Mila a little cup of water.

Everything was set into a bin to collect the water.

All I instructed Mila to do was rescue the ‘rings’ and that the salt helped make it melt.

While she worked hard on melting all the ice, we talked more about the Olympics and I showed her how it was spelled. She’s recognizing letters that are in her name and the ones she sees frequently!

She worked really hard on figuring out the best way to make the ice melt.

Her favorite was to dump a ton a salt on the ice, then water. It was so neat watching her figure out why it was melting and what helped.

It really did take her a while for all the ice to melt. I was impressed with her persistence.

Once it was melted, she enjoyed played with the letters and the flowers in the water. Water is always a great sensory component!

During this play time, Mila let me know her favorite Olympic sport was swimming… of course. She thinks it’s amazing how fast they can get through the water! I’ve also showed her some gymnastics routines that she enjoyed.

We always love sensory play and toddler activities.

It gives toddlers time to have fun while learning and parents time to get some things done! This Olympic Ice Play was a hit with Mila and I think a ton of other kids will enjoy it too!

Do you watch the Olympic Games? What’s your favorite sport?