Frozen painting

What you need

• Water
• Food colouring (alternatively, you could use watered down paint) Blocks, such as Duplo blocks
• Freezer

Benefits

Gross and fine motor skills, enjoyment of mark-making and learning how their movements affect the marks they make.

The experience

You will need to do some preparation before the activity, by preparing coloured water. You can do this either by adding food colouring or a little paint, and pouring this water into the holes of the Duplo pieces before placing in the freezer.

Set up an area with a large piece of paper, on the floor or at a table. The frozen blocks can then be brought out to provide a handy tool for creating coloured marks on the paper.

If you don’t have Duplo or a similar plastic block, you could use ice cube trays or freeze colored water into different sized containers to use for the same purpose. The advantage of using something like a Duplo block is that your child can hold it and move it around the paper without having to directly touch the ice.

Let your child explore and see all the colourful marks they can make on the paper. This is a great one for a sunny day, if you can get outside!