Let Your Child Paint With This Homemade Paint Ice Cream
When my son was a preschooler, I was always looking for new creative pursuits that he could take up. I especially liked activities in which the attitude was part of the activity itself – more benefit can be gained from them. We made homemade clay or mixed cornstarch, water, and food coloring to make sidewalk paint.
So when I came across these homemadeice cubepaints on YouTube, I realized that this is something we would like to do together. Except that he is now nine years old and is definitely too old for this kind of thing, right? Well, he doesn’t think so. When I asked him recently if he would like to try this with me so I could take some photos for this post, he jumped up and got to work. And when we were all done, he thanked me that after lunch I decided to do something else.
What you need
To make these ice cube paints you will need:
- Ice cube tray
- Washable paints (video says food coloring can be used instead, which will likely have a more watercolor look)
- Water
- popsicle
I didn’t have ice cream sticks and didn’t want to go out looking for ice cream sticks, so I improvised – chipping off a handle from some old plastic dish. Maybe non-standard, but worked great.
Step one: squeeze some paint into the bottom of each compartment. Two teaspoons should be enough for this.
Step two: Add water and mix thoroughly.
Step three: freeze. Place the cubes in the freezer for about an hour, until they are partially frozen. Insert ice cream sticks / broken crockery and freeze until completely solid.
Step four: Roll out the paper and get ready to paint! You need to let the cubes melt a little to help the paint flow. Let them sit at room temperature for about 15 minutes before starting.
It was a one-time activity for a nine-year-old, but if he was younger, I would have slipped this popsicles with paint in a freezer bag and shoved them back in the freezer the next day. There is enough paint left so that it can be reused several times.