What is it?
A mineral?
A crystal?
A glass sculpture?
Would you believe that it's ice? And that my four year-old made it?
Even though it's Spring Break round these parts my kiddos BEG to do "homework".
I've been checking out a ton of blogs trying to get ideas for fun and
- I started by freezing a block of ice for each of the kids. I used the bottom half of a plastic milk jug.
- I then put the ice in a pie plate or baking pan (something with higher sides to contain the mess--and there will be a mess).
- I then gave each of the children two different kinds of salt (kosher or sea salt--just something coarse and table salt) to sprinkle onto the ice blocks.
- Finally, I turned them loose with the food coloring. I also used a cheap egg dying kit with some eye droppers.
They LOVED it! Now this activity could be highly educational. You know explaining how the salt helps to melt the ice, or as an example of how to mix colors, or something like that. We just called it "Art" and had a good time.
We then had the fun of "checking on the ice" all day so that we could monitor how it melted. The kids loved that as the ice melted the colors were absorbed into the interior of the ice. I just liked that it was pretty.
Things to remember:
- The Artful Parent used watercolors which would probably be easier to clean up. I had food coloring on hand and was too lazy to go out and buy liquid watercolors. A plus to using food coloring is that the neon green turns all iridescent--which equals really cool!
- Wear old clothes for this project and I highly recommend a plastic table covering. I used dark colored towels and didn't have any issues.
- Let 'em go crazy with the salt! The more that we used the better the results.
Peace Out!
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