Spring is slowly starting to warm up and invite us outside into the breezy daylight. Blip and I have been spending tons of time outside on the porch, winter seems like a distant dream.
Speaking of dreams, I dream about the day he decides that paint is not a good thing to eat so we can spend long afternoons finger painting in the sun. In the mean time I have been brainstorming some fun ways of doing little art type projects with a little one who is still very mouthy. Besides the yogurt and colored pudding ideas that many suggested I was coming up thin before I considered just coloring water.
The water seemed easy and less toxic then paint. It also seemed less likely to just be ate up like yogurt would be. I brain stormed this idea further: should I use a paint brush or show him how to spill it onto paper? Then one day as I made ice it hit me that we could paint with colored ice.
Right away I pulled out the food coloring and got to work dropping the bright colors into the water, making vibrant hues of water. It felt like forever before the trays were full of very solid and addorbly colorful ice cubes. I grabed Blip, a bowl, and some paper and we ran outside!
I took his onsie off so they would not get stained (for the record the colored water that melted from the ice washed right out of his cloth diaper) and we set to work. One by one we pulled out the ice cubes, he giggled when I ran the cold colors over his leg to show him what cold felt like. We then set the ice on the paper and I showed him how to move the ice so colors spread all over like water color. To my surprise he picked up on this quick and copied me, I don't give him enough credit, our little kiddos pick up on things so quick!
After a bit we started throwing some colors in the bowl to watch them melt. The colors will run together, I can only imagine that this would be a great way of teaching preschoolers about mixing colors!
We ended up dumping a bunch of the cubes on the warm concrete and watching as the sun turned them to colorful puddles. Blip splashed a bit and seemed very satisfied with his toy turning into water.
I can see this game being adapted to lots of age groups, I think it will be a regular spring and summer game for many years to come!
Great idea! I think I'll be trying it this week!
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