Beat the heat with Ice-cubes painting!

In India, the summer is at its peak and we are finding new ways to keep us cool!! 🌞And also keeping kids at home during this lock down is quiet challenging. Kids get bored with repeated activities, but not with colors and paint. This time to make it more creative and enjoyable we made colorful ice cubes to paint with!🎨

What a fun way to spend the summer afternoon! Easy to setup and extremely fun!🎭 The only set back is the colored ice cubes melts in a jiffy!!!   

As I said its easy to setup. There are ample variations of preparing these ice cubes for painting. But I tried this way. 

We used Crayola kids washable paint as I don't want the kids to stain their hands, if at all they touch the cubes with hand. Instead you can also use food coloring. For yellow and orange I tried this way. Instead of yellow paint I added turmeric power and for making orange, I added kesari food coloring powder. If you don't have colors you can think of alternatives like these to make colorful cubes!

Initially I had many ideas as on which surface to use the cubes, either on paper or white cloth or on white floor, etc. So as precautionary measure to wash the paint easily off after play, I added few drops of liquid dish wash to the cubes. 

And as a weird idea to make the cubes last longer, I added small amount of corn flour to the cubes! Though it didn't turn out as I expected but wasn't an issue. Either we need to add large proportion of flour or simply use only water and colors to freeze!🎨

So simply add water to the ice cube tray, add drop of paint to each cube, freeze it! I added toothpick sticks to each cube after freezing the cubes for half hour to one hour. You can either use ice cream sticks, as a holder. 

Allow it to freeze for 4-6 hours. Then we are ready to paint! 

Day 1:

LO and his cousin both set to work immediately as the ice cube was taken out of freezer.

The thing is that we have to work really fast, else the ice cubes would melt away! Keep your papers and everything ready before you set to work.

And guess what LO tried with them! Yeah, alphabets!!

The ice cubes started to melt very fast and the tooth pick left its hold off the cubes, so we stopped the coloring. I froze the left over colors to use for text next day.

Day 2:

The next day we used the cubes not on the paper, but on a white board!

When all the cubes were put together in a cup, they melted to form a multi colored water! On seeing that, you know what the kids did! They told its ayurvedha medicine, and immediately went to pick some leaves to soak in it! To prepare some "mooligai kashayam"!!😂😂😂 (Meaning, medicine made with plant extracts in Tamil!) I didn't expect this twist in the activity!😄

It was completely fun to watch the kids discussing about the preparation of medicine and mixing all the colors together.😍

And finally the "kashayam" was poured on the board to make a 'mordern art'!!!😉

One of my friend asked to post the off camera snaps! Like the bloopers... and here they are!😁😁

Empty the left over water in ice cube tray...

Pour water on the board...

Rub it and make a mess!!😁😁

Ultimately it was a different experience for me!!!😊 Try these out and let me know how your family enjoyed! Please post your views in the comment box below!

And check out our previous post - Coloring on Snow - Melting Rainbow

Happy Parenting!😊😊😊

Let's go to the Zoo!

To get rid of kids from the screens is a big battle, I know, but LO isn't that addicted to screens. But that was an old story😭. Now in this lock-down, Oh my God!, I'm constantly struggling to keep him off the screen😕. 

So when I find an activity that he loves and keeps him engaged for hours, I feel a big comfort😊! Activity with animals is always a big hit with LO. But this time I don't want to make him bored with the usual free play. So we decided on this! Me and LO were thinking to make a miniature zoo model for so many months. Right time to implement it fell in this lock-down! 

LO and his cousin brother (my nephew) are so fond of animals and animal toys. They would literally play 'only' with animal toys for months😮! And we missed my nephew a lot while doing this setup. He got assurance from me right in the beginning that we should build this zoo again, once his cousin is back after lock-down!

To start with, I browsed the map of few real zoo's on Earth to get some idea. And finally we decided to make this setup. LO named the Zoo as "Indian Care Zoo"!! What does that mean? He had no answer though!😀

We started by drawing a rough map of the zoo and decided what all animals to have, the habitats, vehicles if any, figurines👫, blocks, color papers etc. We used pistachio shells for making boundaries of certain habitats, wooden and magnetic blocks for some, trays, vehicle track for the shuttle station🚉 and so on. Let me list out the habitats we had on our zoo.

1. Congo Gorilla Forest🐒
2. Lion's Den🐾
3. Butterfly garden🐝
4. Children's park🐕🐄
5. Tiger's Mountain🐅
6. African plains 🐂🐴(along with the shuttle train)🚊
7. Aquatic animals🐙🐬
8. World of Reptiles🐍
9. Jungle land🐘
10. Jurassic park
11. Insect's house🐛
12. Car parking 🚘

Trust me, it would take hours to complete this activity! A real 'time killer' for kids this summer! 

We had a river named "Indian River", named by LO, flowing between children's park and tiger mountain, and built few bridges across it.

LO helped me out in writing out the name boards of few habitats and sticking the same. We had a good discussion on deciding the names of the habitats and yeah also about what habitats to have!

And finally..... !

After completing few setups, he asked if I could help out and yeah I did to keep the momentum of the play going😊(Mommies are always willing to help😁)

Jungle land and Aquatic animals:

Jurassic Park and Car Parking:

 We had even ticket counter and security people at the gate. And also look at our traffic police man!😁

Children's Park and Tiger Mountain:
We placed all the domestic animals in the Children's Park. A separate Hippo house made of magnetic blocks nearby it. The Tiger Mountain had only the Tigers, Leopards, Jaguar and Cheetah.
And do you know what's the difference between Leopard, Jaguar and Cheetah? Click here to know!

African Plains:
The African Plains had Elephant, Giraffe, Deer, Fox, Zebra, etc. This habitat is aided by a shuttle to go on a Jungle safari!

The Congo Gorilla Forest: 

LO placed few gorillas, monkeys, hyenas on it. I would strongly recommend you to visit Bronx zoo's site to explore interesting facts about Congo Gorilla Forest.

LO didn't allow me to cleanup the zoo for the next two days!

Initially we did animal wash. Yes! Put your kids to work!😊

Please leave your comments in the comment box below.

Happy Parenting 😊😊

Put your kids to work!!!

Yes, put your kids to work alongside you, to develop the habit of helping others. Moreover I feel doing tasks together can contribute to strengthen our relationships. LO, right now is in his kindergarten, love to help me in household activities, sometimes he wanted to do all by himself. And while doing so he would say "Ma, you please go and do some other work!!!". I can't resist instructing and correcting him, and he completely doesn't like me interrupting in his work, because of his overwhelming desire to be completely independent!! Now I have corrected myself and understood the ill effects of 'helicopter parenting'! Now I'm resisting myself from not interrupting him! Silly me, parenting is a lifelong learning process, I understood very late! 

But with the toddlers chores may only be completed with your help each step of the way. While their help may not be as helpful as we would think, keeping their enthusiasm and the habit of helping alive is worth the extra work!Ok, Let's get into chores.

LO's vehicle wash!  

Just give them soap water, brush and dipper! Sit back and watch the fun. What would kids do if they are allowed to play with water, that too in this summer! That would be a never ending play! This chore turned out to be a two-in-one for LO, both fun play and vehicles clean up.

He cleaned up his Bicycle, Tricycle, My Black scooty, Red scooty, and his Skateboard scooter. And finally his school bag too! 

Water with soap in a tub. Its bubbles time!

And finally he let the vehicles dry in the sun.

His school bag too had a clean wash!

Happy Parenting😊😊😊

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