When I think of summertime art projects I think of water, and on really hot days, ice. This week mother nature blessed us with sunny mornings and sunny afternoons. We took advantage of this glorious weather by doing art outside and experimenting with ice and watercolor.
We warmed up with painting liquid watercolor on large coffee filters. I challenge each child regardless of age to fill their entire filter with color. This creates a stunning take home project.
After paint brushes we moved on to droppers and used these on both the coffee filters and watercolor paper. Droppers are great for fine motor skill/ pincher grasp development.
Next came ice cube painting which overall was a success.
Some children loved playing with the ice cube paints as much as painting with them. Check out the tutorial at First Palette if you want to try this at home or in your classroom.
In my research for outdoor, summertime art projects I ran across ice sculptures on The Chocolate Muffin Tree. What an inspiring blog and what a great project! I love mixing science and art.
I made large frozen discs in 5 oz. containers, added ice cubes (which I bought in bags) and offered salt and watercolor. We used both table salt and ice cream salt.
Salt lowers the melting point of the ice and actually helps melt the large cubes. If you give it enough time you can create large craters and veins in the ice sculptures which are perfect to paint with watercolor.
This project was filled with experimentation and discovery and the outcome was often vibrant and stunning.
