Treasured VBS: Ice Painting
Ice painting is a perfect summer activity for kids of all ages! It is also a great project to do all week long at Treasured VBS.
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Ice painting is so fun (and a bit messy too!). Depending on the age of your kids, it may be better to do this project outside or in an easy-to-clean area.
Supplies:
White cardstock paper
Ice cube trays or small plastic containers
Small plastic animals
Food coloring
1 tray for each student
Glue
Construction paper
Black permanent markers
Optional: sequins and glitter glue
Instructions:
This project is great to do over several days (or adults can do some of the steps without help from students). I’m going to note which day you could do which steps below, but you can definitely modify as needed or just have the kids do the painting step on one day and have adults do the rest.
DAY 1
First, find small animals that will fit in your ice cube trays or small plastic containers. We used the smallest size plastic containers that came with our Rubbermaid container set.
Put your animals in the ice cube trays or plastic containers. We sat our containers inside a plastic shoebox so they wouldn’t tip over. Add water to each container (but don’t drown the animals – they are the handle for each ice cube). We put about 3/4″ of water in each container.
Add food coloring to each container. We added a few drops to each (although my toddlers were helping so I use the phrase “a few drops” very loosely!). Use the animal to mix the food coloring with the water, then put the containers in the freezer to make colored ice cubes.
DAY 2
Once the ice cubes are frozen solid, you’re ready to paint! Give each kid a piece of white cardstock paper. (Don’t forget to write their name on it!)
Make sure you give each student a tray of some sort – these colored ice cubes get pretty messy as they melt. The tray could be a baking sheet, foil pan, plastic tray, etc.
Let the kids paint however they want on their paper! We did learn that it’s better to not get TOO MUCH liquid on your paper – the paper will tear when it gets really saturated (see photo below). After this one, when my kids paper started to get really wet I’d take their paper and give them a new sheet. My girls happily painted 5 or more sheets of paper each!
Fair warning: the longer your kids are ice painting, the more likely it is that their hands are going to end up dyed. It’s just food coloring, so it’s non-toxic. 🙂
Let your ice painting papers dry. I laid ours on kitchen towels to dry (so they didn’t dye the table).
You’ll now have a bundle of animals that probably have food coloring on them. I gave my kids a bowl of soapy water and let them give the animals a bath. They loved this step of the process, and it gave me time to clean up the art table!
DAY 3
Once the papers are dry, glue each ice painting paper to a sheet of colored construction paper. If you let your kids make multiple paintings, you can either just mount the 1-2 that turn out the best, or you can mount them all and encourage the kids to gift them to friends and family.
Once the ice paintings are glued to construction paper, use a permanent marker to write a message on each paper. I wrote You are God’s treasure! You could encourage students to flip the paper over and write an encouraging note to whoever they’re going to give each ice painting picture to.
DAY 4 (OPTIONAL)
If you want to have the kids add more to their ice paintings, you can let them add sequins and glitter glue to their projects.
I think the paintings are great without sequins, but I asked my preschooler if she wanted them and of course the answer was YES!
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