It has been warm here lately for me (80-90 degrees), so we have been hot! To cool things off a bit, we've been playing and exploring with ice a lot.
Tomorrow I am sharing three of our favorite ways to play with ice over at A Mom with a Lesson Plan... so today I thought I'd add just one more to our list.
This weekend we explored and mixed colors using food coloring, our hands, and crushed ice.
Food coloring can stain hands a bit, but we didn't really care. If you do, you can always use a tool to move the ice around or let your child use plastic gloves. We made sure to cover any surfaces nearby that we didn't want to get food coloring on.
Materials Needed:
- freezer paper or finger painting paper- we like freezer paper because the liquid doesn't soak through it
- food coloring
- bowl of crushed ice
- (optional) towel to put down under your painting paper
Directions for color mixing with ice:
- Place some crushed ice on top of the freezer paper
- Squirt two different colors of food coloring onto the ice. Make a prediction regarding what color you think you will make.
- Mix the colors up.
- Create your picture and then let the ice/paint dry.
We did this process again and again on our large piece of freezer paper. My son loved swirling the ice around and trying to create different things.
After the painting was dry, we hung it up in our window and it made for a beautiful rainbow sun catcher. I thought about cutting it into some sort of cute shape, but we loved seeing all of the different swirly colors together so much that we just left it alone.
Didn't it turn out beautifully?
Does your child love creating and playing with ice?
Here are several more awesome activities using ice...
- Ice Excavation Activities via Carrots Are Orange
- Ice Boats Sensory Play via Make, Do, & Friend
- Ice Bowling via A Little Learning for Two
- Ice Ornaments via Red Ted Art
- Freezing and Color Mixing via Science Sparks
- Painting with Icicles via Mama Smiles
- Cool Ice Art via Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
- Fishing for Ice via Time for Play
- Ice Play in Preschool via Teach Preschool
- Bathtime Fun- Colored Ice Cubes via Dirt and Boogers
- Alphabet Ice via Creekside Learning
- Colorful Ice Cube Painting via The Outlaw Mom
- Ice Fishing via No Time for Flashcards
You can also check out this wonderful ice play round up over at NurtureStore.
Do you have any other favorites you would add?
What a lovely idea. Thanks for including Science Sparks xx
Ice simply IS wonderful 🙂 So fascinating for kids!
Thank you for including us in your round up!
Maggy
Oooh, never knew there was such a thing as freezer paper (can you tell I'm not in the kitchen much, except for baking and making art!). Great ideas for us to try out…thanks for sharing ours, too 🙂
We did some ice painting too! 🙂 Here's our version: littlerunningteacher.com/ice-painting-with-the-kids/
I think freezer wrap paper would work great for this. The ice color paint won't leak through the paper.
Yep, that is exactly why we used freezer paper for this! It worked perfectly.