Water, water, everywhere!

Here's a good tip I've learned that is both conserving of water and fun!

My son has a sand/water table and a small plastic kiddie pool.  I've been using the water from those to water my many flower pots on a daily basis.  Jack loves to help me scoop out the water and dump it on the nearby plants.

Last weekend, I had to throw out a 16 lb of ice I've had in the freezer (from the move) as I no longer had space for it.  Instead of just letting it melt, I let my son put it (about a 1/4 of the bag at a time) into a couple of inches of water in his water table.  He stood there for well over an hour and a half using big slotted kitchen spoons and straining the ice out of the water and dumping it into the bucket.  Once the bucket was full, we'd put them ice back in and start over.  HE LOVED IT!  Jack learned skills such as hot/cold, big/little, fine and gross motor (picking up dropped pieces of ice off of a deck is tricky!), and the water cycle.  Now he knows that ice is "cold, cold" and that when it gets "hot, hot" it turns into water.

So, I used that almost wasted 16lbs of ice for an afternoon out of the AC, plenty of fun, and time to practice lots of new skills!