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Ice Cube Paintings


This is a great summer project for a warm/hot day! It takes a little bit of preparation, as you need colored ice cubes. Put a few drops of different food coloring into each section of an ice cube tray. Slowly fill with water and freeze. After the cubes have frozen remove them from the tray and place them in a bowl for easy access. If you are like me and put too much food coloring in, you can add more water to the tray and place in the freezer again for a second batch!


The the "cold" fun begins! We used card stock for our projects, as they can get quite wet as the ice melts, and a thinner paper will easily tear when wet.


Allow the children to choose their own ice cubes and run them along their paper. The results are fabulous, the process is a ton of fun! Not only are they participating in an art process, but they are discovering how ice melts, and how the heat from their hands impacts that process.
This is a messy project, as the food color stains hands- but that is part of the fun! You could put toothpicks into the ice cubes, but that would limit the exploration of ice melting in the children's hands. (On a side note, shaving cream works quite well to remove the stain on your hands from food coloring. We opted to make shaving cream sculptures and practice writing in shaving cream after this project).









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Comments

Rebecca said…
We did ice cube paintings last summer and cant wait to do them again. Its so fun!
Deborah Stewart said…
I thought it might be fun to try painting with Popsicles. Have you ever tried that?
Blanca said…
Thanks for sharing I will do this activity with my class this summer.
Wow it's so clever :) thx for sharing
I have not tried to paint with popsciles, that could be interesting as long as they are more interested in painting with them than they are in eating them!

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