Melting Ice for Summer STEAM Fun

Even though it’s not even summer yet, my daughter is already complaining about the heat and wanting to do things that will help her cool down.

We love doing activities that involve water and ice, and this melting ice sculptures experiment from Babble Dabble Do is a great way to play with ice and learn a little along the way.

Using salt and water to melt the ice makes really cool craters in the ice, and adding food coloring into the mix makes it even more interesting.

Talk to kids about how salt changes the freezing point of ice (she talks about the science in the post) and how changing the shape of the ice makes a three-dimensional sculpture. Art and science, all in one. How cool is that?

[Photo: Babble Dabble Do.]

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Easy Ideas for Water Play with Kids

There are so many different holiday themed arts and crafts projects that kids can do, but I wanted to share a bunch of easy ones that you ca do with a classroom of kiddos or at home to display through the season. (A lot of these projects would be great to do at school for kids to give as gifts.)

This watercolor snowflake project from The Crafty Classroom uses bleeding tissue paper to make the effect. If you don’t have any on hand you can just paint on the template with watercolors.

Speaking of watercolor, these watercolor geometric holiday designs are super cute painted with watercolors. Get the templates from The Best Ideas for Kids. You could also just have kids color them in with crayons or oil pastels if you don’t have watercolor paint handy.

Make a painting of a Christmas tree in a window with this project idea from Projects with Kids. It doesn’t take a lot of supplies but looke really pretty and would be cute to make into a greeting card or just to decorate the classroom.

I love these little printable pop up scenes for kids to color from Krokotak. They look like little snow globes and feature a pop up snowman, gift, tree and house so kids can pick their favorite to make.

Shaving cream marbling is a classic kid craft, and you can give it a holiday twist with this project from One Little Project. It’s shown as a Christmas tree but you could make it into a snowflake, bauble or anything else you like.

And speaking of baubles, while we’re veering into sensory territory, why not try painting with Christmas ornaments? This idea from Happy Toddler Playtime is easy to set up and fun for kids — just make sure you’re using non-breakable ornaments! This is another one where it would be fun to do the painting and then cut it into festive shapes to use as ornaments or in other projects.

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