Dec 2025 / Jan 2026
Frozen Fun!
Academic Standards
Reading Objective:
Students will learn how icicles are formed, and identify steps to building a castle from icicles.
Next Generation Science Standards:
K-2-ETS1: Engineering Design
K-ESS2-1: Patterns in weather and temperature
K-PS3: The effect of sunlight on the Earth’s surface in making the weather warmer or colder
Vocabulary:
icicle, slush, solid, liquid, gas
Use your Science Spin to find the best answer to each question.
1. What do workers build the castle with?
icicles
2. What is slush?
water mixed with snow
3. When water drips down and freezes in a pointy shape, it makes _____ .
an icicle
4. Draw a picture of you in the castle having fun.
© Go online to print or project the Reading Checkpoint.
- Every winter, ice castles are created in several cold places around the country.
- It was all started by a dad who figured out how to build his kids an ice cave in their backyard.
- The cave looked so cool that people from all around came to enjoy it!
Materials: Copies of the skill sheet, pencils, and sticks and connectors for building. Sticks can be toothpicks, coffee stirrers, raw spaghetti noodles, thin pretzel sticks,etc. Connectors can be playdough, biodegradable packing peanuts, mini marshmallows, soft candy such as Dots, etc.
Overview: Instead of using icicles, kids build creations with small sticks like toothpicks. Instead of slush, they use clay, packing peanuts, or candy to connect them.
Directions:
- Set up workstations with enough sticks and connectors for each group.
- To start the lesson, remind kids that ice castles are built from icicles stuck together with slush.
- Demonstrate how they will build with sticks, connected with your chosen material.
- Explain that before engineers build the ice castles,they sketch a design first. Hand out the skill sheets for this. Send kids to the workstations to sketch and build.
- Can kids build their “castles” to match the sketches, or will they need to tweak the design? Engineers do this all the time!