Digging for St. Patrick's Day Gold Activity

Looking for a fun and easy kids' St. Patrick's Day science activity?  Well, lucky you!  You're at the right place!  I  originally saw this Fun at Home with Kids' St. Patrick's Day Ice Play activity and thought, "Wow!  I gotta try it!"  Basically you freeze Leprechaun's "gold" inside of ice, and then ask your child to help you break them out using salt.  (Because the salt lowers the freezing point of water, essentially melting your ice.)  Genius right?  So we tried it out.  Success!  Chuck had a ton of fun and we've already done the activity twice!  

Let's go digging for some Leprechaun gold!

Keep reading to see how we did this St. Patrick's Day Activity!

Materials Needed

 

• Baking Dish
• Water
• Green Food Coloring
• Sequins (or something sparkly- this adds a touch of Leprechaun magic)
• Pennies (our "gold")
• Spoon
• Salt
• Dropper

Directions to set up your Ice

 

1.  Drop a couple of pennies and sequins into your baking dish.
2.  Then pour water into the baking dish, covering everything.
3.  Add a couple of drops of food coloring in and mix everything around.
4.  Place your baking dish into the freezer over nite.

When you pull your block of ice out, it should look like this:

Magical, right?

 

Now let's go dig out some St. Patrick's Day gold!

5.   Flip over your block of green Leprechaun ice to reveal your coins. 

6.  Drop water and salt over each coin to melt the surrounding ice and  free your gold!  Dig the coins out with your finger or a spoon.

After we finished, I set the block of ice to melt in the sink.  Chuck then just had fun scooping and re-scooping the coins out of the remaining green water.

So there you have it.  We had a lot of fun doing this activity and hope you do too.  Happy treasure hunting! 

Looking for more St. Patrick's Day Science activities? 

Try these out!

• Make rainbow colored milk
• Make rainbow rain
• Make rainbow flowers
• Make CD Rainbows