Using Your Tuff Spot: Ice

We love our tuff spot in our house, it is so versatile and we use it all of the time, we got ours from Ebay. With the hot weather we have had recently we have been making ice cubes to go in our drinks. Little G has been fascinated by them and so I decided to show her the process of freezing to melting with the use of our tuff spot.

First step was to make the ice cubes. We made up two jugs, one of blackcurrant and one of orange squash. She hasn’t quite got the hang of pouring and ended up pouring half of the juice into the tuff spot. She then proceeded to sit in it! I think she thought I would be cross as she had a look of panic on her face. Instead I laughed and told her she better take her trousers off!

After a couple of hours the ice cubes were ready. She was so excited to take them out of the freezer! We popped them out of the ice cube trays and she picked one up. She dropped it immediately and screeched ‘It is freezing mummy!’. I suppose she has never held an ice cube before, only having them in her cup.

She sat watching the ice cubes for a while and then began to touch and swirl them around the tuff spot. She found that if she pushed them thy would glide along quickly leaving a melted trail behind them.

At this point I thought she might enjoy smashing them up so I went to get her little hammer from her doctors kit (I’m sure it probably has a proper name but we call it the knee hammer haha!).

I am a weakling so Mr F showed her how to smash one up. It broke into lots of tiny pieces and she squealed in delight! She then spent the next half an hour smashing up the remaining ice cubes.

Now, Little G is a bit of a fuss pot at times and she was a little concerned that they were melting all over her hands. I asked her if she would like to lick one. She looked at me like i was crazy!! I assured her that it was ok, that they would taste of blackcurrant or orange. She tentatively licked one, found that I was telling the truth and that they did indeed taste of squash and continued to lick it until it had melted completely!

Has your child discovered ice? What did they do with it?

Take a look at the other posts in the ‘Tuff Spot Ideas’ series to see what else we have done with it.

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Adventure Togs

Wednesday 16th of July 2014

Ice is so much fun! Little G obviously had a great time :)#letkidsbekids

Katy F

She really did, she would have stayed at the activity longer had it not all melted! :-)

Caroline (Becoming a SAHM)

Tuesday 15th of July 2014

great idea! Tuff Spots are fabulous aren't they!? We played with Ice last summer but haven't done so yet this year, must have a go as I know Monkey would love it :) xx #letkidsbekids

It is meant to be boiling the next couple of days so it would be perfect :-)

Karen Bell

What a lovely fun way to play, experiment and explore. Ice play is on my summer to do list, thanks for some more ideas.Thanks for linking #LetKidsbeKids

Definitely one for the summer. It wasn't the warmest of days when we did this and her.hands were frozen by the end but kids never seem to care do they?!

Laura George

Saturday 12th of July 2014

This sounds like soo much fun!! I've never heard of a tuff spot before but they look brilliant. I still love ice, at the age of 22 so i hope my future children do tooo :P #weekendbloghop xx

I had never heard of one until a couple of years ago and finally got round to buying one a few months ago! So glad I did! As long as you love something then your future children will too :-)

Hi Gemma, I put the code in but nothing appeared. I did message you under the linky post about it. Ill try again but not sure what went wrong. If it doesn't work maybe I'll just put a link at the bottom of the post xx