kids craft: make your own mini-olympic ice rink

We've been watching the Winter Olympics in Vancouver these past few nights and Juliet has gotten a little Olympic fever. 

We decided to make our own Olympic ice rink for her toys to skate on. Here's what we did. 

I traced the shape of the cake pan on a piece of white paper and then cut out the circle. (You could use any shaped pan.) Then I drew the Olympic rings in crayon (using a soft drink can to get the circles perfectly round.) You could draw any image on the paper--a favorite hockey team logo, college mascot, your child's name, or even Mickey Mouse. If you had stickers, that would make this even easier. 

Next, Juliet poured in about 2 cups of water. Then we placed it in the freezer overnight. 

It turned out pretty well the next morning. The paper had somewhat wrinkled and bunched around the bottom of the yellow ring (you can see how it is a little hard to see), but other than that, it looked good!

Perfect for Juliet's toys to get a good morning skate in. She LOVED it! And played with it until it started melting. We then put it back into the freezer and got it out a few hours later at her request. She calls it "her ice rink."

The only book that we have that has a "winter sports" theme to it is Big Dog, Little Dog by P.D. Eastman. It's a favorite and one that Juliet likes to role-play quite often with Ben. She's Ted and he's Fred. Or maybe it's the other way around. 

She loved having her own ice rink for Fred and Ted to skate on and I think we'll be playing with it again tomorrow!

I'm linking this up with Tip Me Tuesday at Tip Junkie, the Olympic link-up at Hoosier Handmade, and Try and Tell Tuesday at Mom Tried It!!