Ice Scavenger Hunt: Outdoor Fun for Kids!

Creating an ice scavenger hunt is lots of fun in any weather. An ice scavenger hunt is perfect for cooling kids down in hot weather and it’s a great way to get kids outside in cold weather too. Using ice to spice up a traditional outdoor treasure hunt is guaranteed to help your kids play outside for longer. An outdoor treasure hunt using ice is easy to set up and can be adapted for kids of all ages. Both my 3 year old and 11 year old enjoyed their ice scavenger hunt – you can see below how we adapted the Winter Scavenger Hunt for different age ranges.

Coloured block Ice Scavenger hunt

A simple ice scavenger hunt is to use ice cube trays to freeze ice coloured with food colouring. You can make them as ice lanterns and scatter them around the garden and your toddler will have fun looking for them and identifying the colours! You can also use liquid watercolours or soap colourant to colour the soap- this doesn’t stain little hands so much. You can also use balloons filled with water and a few drops of food colouring to make the ice lanterns or ice marbles.

Ice Painting

You could team this activity with ice painting too. Pop a lolly stick in the coloured water before freezing – and then you have painting sticks ready for your preschooler!

Letters and numbers ice activity

A good ‘getting ready for school activity’ is to hide letters and numbers in small pots of water and freeze them. Hide the ice blocks around the garden and when discovered, the children can try to melt the ice to discover their letter or number. This is a great activity for developing letter/ number recognition.
If you don’t have a garden, you could try transporting them to a park in a cool bag to hide them there. Or you can definitely do this ice activity inside the warmth of your house by putting the ice blocks inside a large container or even doing the activity in the bathtub.

Ice Activities for Older Kids

Ice letter Scavenger Hunt

You will need: Magnet or wooden mini letters, Implements to break the ice- for example- Meat tenderiser, screwdriver, mini hammer etc……

This is a fun ice activity for older children and makes a great alternative to a normal outdoor nature scavenger hunt. Using balloons or plastic bags, put a full word (which is your clue) inside and then add water and pop them in the freezer overnight. Take them out of the freezer and hide them around your garden. Next, give your kids a clue to find the first one. Each ice block should contain a word that reveals where the next clue is! Next- give your kids a variety of implements to see if they can break the ice and free the words to reveal their next clue (for example, they might reveal the word ‘FENCE’ for a clue that’s near a fence.) Words we’ve used are TREE, SWING, FENCE and then more cryptic clues such as WATER (the clue was near the drainpipe) or BEACH (clue was in the sandpit etc….)

Ice Excavation Treasure Hunt

You can also combine the ice treasure hunt with an Ice Science Activity too. Make larger ice balloons filled with anything you think your kids would like to excavate! The process of making the ice balloons is fun enough to occupy your kids for a good chunk of time. If they are interested, have them try and stuff the pom poms or miniature toys in the balloons themselves. Then once they’ve filled them, add the water and pop them in the freezer. Next give kids a large bowl and try to see if they can melt the ice the quickest with different methods. This the perfect activity to cool kids down on a hot day! Use the ideas below to see how the ice melts the quickest!

Ways to Melt Ice

Ice science is cheap and easy to set up although you do need to think about it the day before! Try these easy ice melting experiments.

• Sugar
• Salt
• Vinegar mixed with water
• Coffee Granules
• Bicarbonate of Soda

Hope these give you lots of fun ideas to play with Ice in Winter OR Summer! You can also check out some more Winter Outdoor Activities that use Nature for Kids!