By Andrea LeDuc
Its a freezing cold day with warn
ings that children should only be outside for 10 -30 minutes. What to do? Make some ice art!! The kids and I went thru the recycling bin looking for juice boxes and other fun containers. What kid doesn’t love pouring water into containers and dropping food colouring? Be careful when filling up balloons. I forgot to add the food colouring first and had a splash of blue all over my kitchen. It also turns out that a 3 year old can add an awful lot of colouring in the blink of an eye LOL.
Ice is a really fascinating medium
Then, we took them outside to freeze! Ice is a really fascinating medium. It expands as it freezes and floats. I thought ice would freeze from the bottom to the top but it is actually the opposite! The thickest ice is at the top and then the sides freeze up and then the bottom tends to be very thin and easily breakable. We discovered all this because we are impatient! I thought they were done freezing cuz the top looked well formed and half way down was still good and then sploosh! All the water at the bottom gushes out. But it makes for a very interesting edge. It is also interesting that most of the color has migrated to the center too. If you actually wait for the whole thing to freeze you’ll see how color freezes like a fuzzy caterpillar. It must be one of the last things to freeze. An interesting question
to talk about with kids: Why does the water freeze first? I wish I knew. This is an activity that can raise lots of science questions and interesting discussions!
Decorated our front stairway
Anyway we took our juice box and 
balloon ice sculptures and decorated our front stairway. We also brought the balloon one in and put a candle in it for a nice dinner centerpiece. My family is looking forward to trying some bigger, fully frozen, objects d’art to put on our front lawn! It’s a fun activity with lots of things to discuss. Maybe we’ll try some sculpting next time. My son loves using a hammer!
You need:
Food coloring
Juice boxes
Empty containers
Water
Balloons
Water
Andrea LeDuc lives with her family in Toronto. When she is not making ice art with her kids she is out helping families as the Toronto Lice Lady
