While the Northern Hemisphere is trying to keep warm and perhaps looking forward to spring, summer is still going strong here in New Zealand.

Each year our family goes on a little summer tiki tour. Which means we pack up our car as full as we possibly can, squeeze in the kids and take off anywhere the sun is shining.

There’s nothing like a messy tent, dirty kids and sing-alongs in the car to feel like you’re truly on holiday. Bring on summer!

And to add to the fun we’ve made an ice cube necklace for everyone …

Must Do Summer Activity: Making an Ice Cube Necklace

Making an ice cube necklace is such a lovely summer activity. It’s easy to make, the kids can do it by themselves and you can use a variety of materials.

Since we’ve been moving around and have been on the road every couple of days, it’s great to have a simple, versatile activity on hand. Especially when the weather is very hot, making ice cube necklaces is sure to be a winner!

Here’s what we did:

We used the local ice cube tray, some embroidery floss and craft sequins. And kind of string will do and any random item can be frozen. You choose what you like or use what you have handy.

We put the sequins in the ice cube tray and filled it with water. Some started floating and others sank to the bottom, which looked really pretty.

We then carefully placed the embroidery floss over the tray making sure the floss was covered with water in every compartment.

It then went into the freezer for a couple of hours. We ended up leaving it in overnight.

The next day my daughter couldn’t wait to check on the necklaces to see if they were all frozen. She was very excited to see them come out of the ice cube trays and dangling around!

It was surprisingly cold!

When trying them on, she preferred her necklace to be longer so we added an extra piece of string to the pink one. As you can tell, the green necklace was a lot shorter and too cold to wear directly onto my skin! (Brave me!)

My 2 year old son thought it was very exciting and had a great time exploring these extraordinary necklaces. He felt them, sucked on them, looked for sequins on my dress, swung the necklace around and watched the drops fall down. He even walked around in it for a while.

Make it your own!

My 4 year old daughter thought these ice cube necklaces were very sparkly and beautiful and was so proud of her creations. She made some more later with pieces of her drawing ripped into pieces and tucked into the ice cube tray. And she has plans for making another one when we get home, using all the different flowers from our garden.

You could use any kind of material you want! Having an adventurous toddler at home, I’d be mindful of using things like beads or coins that could be a choking hazard. But other than that, I’m quite happy to give anything a go. Picklebums has some great ideas for things to freeze for play here.

If you have different ice cube tray molds your necklaces could take all sorts of shapes. You could make edible necklaces freezing fruits. There are different materials that could serve as necklace, like ribbons or leather cord. You could experiment trying to colour the ice cubes. The necklace could be entirely made out of ice cubes like we did or one ice cube could be the centrepiece. You get the idea, whatever you can imagine and works for you!

Oh, the fun you’ll have on those hot summer days … have a look at our other summer creative play ideas here!

Ann*

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