Here's the basic premise: freeze ice cubes, each with a few drops of food coloring in them so that you have colored ice. Then, just spread out some paper and let your kids "paint" with the ice. Here's how it worked out for us.
Step 1: Create colored ice. We just added food coloring to water.
Note: The color will be all over your hands before you even start "painting". Do not wear good clothes for this project.
Step 2: Lay out paper. We used the paper that came with our Melissa and Doug easel, so it was on a roll.
Step 3: Paint
Note: This activity works better if your kid just likes to make crazy shapes and colors. Mine wanted to make a rainbow. This medium doesn't really lend itself to detailed drawings. Also, by the end, you will end up with a heap of soaking wet paper.
When we were done, I didn't want to let the pretty colored ice cubes just melt in the bowl, so I grabbed a white rag from our cleaning bin and let him spread the left over ice cubes out on it to melt.
Once all the ice cubes melted, the rag looked pretty cool.
The resulting "art" from the paper painting did not look even that appealing.
So this project is more about having fun with colored ice than in the beautiful art that results. But the kid had fun, so it was a success.
Two things I might try differently next time:
1) The rag part of the project was the least interactive, but looked the coolest, so I might try it with clothing dye and do it as an alternative to tie-dying a T-Shirt.
2) Instead of food coloring, I might try to freeze water mixed with plain old kids tempura paint, which is water soluble. We might get better colors both during and after the painting process. But boy will it be a mess, so we will dress appropriately.
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This post inspired by Pinteresting IRL.
