Dinosaurs and Frozen Sensory Snow

I saw this awesome recipe for Shivery Snow Dough from Learn with Play at Home a few months back and thought it was totally brilliant!  A freezing cold snow dough in the hot summer sounded just perfect.  I decided to make a different snow dough, but followed her add glitter and freeze steps.  :)  

I wanted to use something that crunched like snow, and I remembered the texture of slightly wet baking soda - the precursor to making  our baking soda shells in our Hidden Fizzing Ocean World (and also our Fizzing Treasure Rocks in Day 2 of our Leprechaun Treasure Hunt).

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So I took two boxes of baking soda and added just enough water that it looked like crumbly snow (I mixed by hand).  Then I added some glitter (of course) and popped it in the freezer.  S loved how cold it was, but it was pretty darn frozen.  We decided to add some water with our squeezy condiment bottlesto see if we could melt some of the "snow".

Adding the water started the melting process and you could break off little tiny melty snowballs.  It was then deemed ready for some dinosaurs!  Now these particular dinosaurs lead pretty adventurous lives.  If you are a regular reader, you'll recall they've been fossilized, caught in sticky mud, and frozen in gelatin.  Today was their first adventure in snow, though.  :)

Since the snow was made of baking soda, S wanted to try adding some vinegar (I know some of my readers have children who don't like the smell of vinegar - this play works perfectly well with water!  Vinegar is totally optional.)   We had fun watching the brief glittery burst of bubbles as the vinegar and baking soda reacted.

Then it was back to playing.  The vinegar/water made glittery lakes on either side of a frozen path.  The dinosaurs were taking many trips back and forth along the frozen path and sometimes falling into a lake on either side and needing S's assistance (apparently dinosaurs are not good swimmers)!

As the baking soda snow melted, it was so soft.  I was surprised to see how long the whole mixture stayed cold.  It was really quite cold even at two hours out (S REALLY liked this world and kept playing and playing and...you get the idea)!

The slurry that the melted baking soda made was reminiscent of cornstarch and water.  It was nice and goopy and drippy, which is extra fun for dramatic play.

As it melted, the frozen crumbles turned into more of a snowy sludge (it was still SO COLD!) and S could make patterns with her fingers and the dinosaurs could leave footprints (they quickly disappeared, but it was pretty cool).

So much fun - and baking soda is only 59 cents a box at the Dollar Tree!  What's not to love?  :)

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Please always supervise your infant/child at play.  Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.