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!😊😊😊