Make Colorful Ice Sculptures with Colored Ice Blocks
Making colorful ice sculptures with the colored ice cube blocks is a perfect winter activity for kids of all ages! You and your kids will love building these colorful ice castles and when the sun shines on them they sparkle and look so magical!
We had a blast making these ice sculptures with our colored ice cubes out in the snow the other day!
My 3 and 5 year old loved how beautiful the rainbow ice cubes looked against the white snow and building them up to make a snowy “fairy house”. Complete with a door, because how else would they get in and out? 🙂 That part was quite tricky, because while the cubes did stick together with a little squirt of water, they still tumbled around a bit as well! We spent a lot of time building and breaking and doing it over again!
The next day the finished ice sculpture was still standing strong in the snow and it lasted a couple of days until it started to warm up outside!
This was such a fun way to get outside and enjoy the snow and cold weather!
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Supplies to Make Colored Ice Blocks
- Food Coloring or Liquid Watercolors – we used both for a variety of color and they worked equally well!
- Ice Cube Trays or Ice Molds (we also used small plastic containers, muffin tins, these fun ring pop popsicle molds and regular popsicle molds!)
- Spray Bottle (Optional – but helpful!)
How to Make Colorful Ice Sculptures
I mixed the food coloring (or liquid watercolor) into a pyrex measuring cup with a little bit of water until it was diluted to a color I liked.
I then poured the colored water into the molds and repeated the process with lots of different colors until we ran out of containers. You can then place them in your freezer or outside if it’s below freezing!
The smaller ice cubes were ready in about 4 hours, but the larger cups took longer and so we let them freeze overnight and they were ready the next day. Freezing time will depend on the size of your containers.
Once they are frozen plop them out onto the snow and begin building! If you are having a hard time getting it out of the container just run a bit of warm water on the container until they pop free.
To build with your rainbow ice cubes bring a small spray bottle and it will act as your glue in helping the cubes stick together. The spray bottle also melted the snow off of our ice cubes so we could see the colors more clearly.
Helpful Tips
This activity is best when it’s below freezing so the sculptures stay together more easily. When sprayed by the spray bottle wait just a few seconds and the water freezes the colored cubes together!
Wear snow gloves, not cloth gloves! We all started with cloth mittens so we could handle the ice cubes better, but the ice cubes just stuck to our mittens!
Why we love this Ice Building Activity
- The kids loved creating the colored water and adding drops of food coloring to create the colors. This is a great activity to learn primary colors and see which colors mix to make a beautiful new color!
- It is budget friendly! Just a little water and food coloring and you’re set!
- It is a fun winter science activity for preschoolers to watch the water freeze and become solid in the cold.
- It was a wonderful way to use our imagination outside and building the fairy castle was so much fun for the girls. The blocks stay colored and together as long as it doesn’t rain or warm up – so it’s a great building activity and creates play for many days! Kids will love adding to their structures to see how big they can build them!
- Older kids will be equally as entertained with this activity and there is no limit to the size of the blocks you create (Have you seen this colored igloo?!) The options are endless and building these ice sculptures is a great way to get outside in wintertime!
Other Ways to Play with Colored Ice
Play seek and find and hide the “gems” around the yard and see how many they can uncover and find! These ring pop molds made awesome ice gems!
Have a competition and see who can build the highest or strongest tower
You could try making these giant ice balls made with water balloons! They would be super fun to build with as well!
If you want to play with colored ice blocks in summertime – you could add them to a sensory bin for some sensory play! This post has great ideas for playing with ice blocks on a hot day!
We hope you enjoy this fun activity and would love to hear what you made with your frozen ice blocks in the comments below! 🙂
Other Fun Winter Activities:
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