Summer Vacay - Day 28: Ice Art

It has been hot so today we did something cool (cool like ice, get it?). Yesterday I froze an ice chunk and this morning we pulled it out and placed in a pie dish and I tempted the kids with food colouring. As we sat there staring at our ice chunk I passed around a small dish of kosher salt and asked each of them to sprinkle a bit on the top. We then watched as the salt melted the ice in the spots it touched, felt the surface and they came to the quick conclusion that salt melts ice. Now that we could see holes forming and crevices down the side I told the kids they could start squirting food colouring at their leisure.

The colours starting soaking down through the holes the salt had made and through all the little cracks forming. The kids really liked watching the colours fall down the sides where the salt had melted. The also LOVED that the water pooling in the bottom of the pie dish was changing colours as they added more colours. It turned into a big game and they started going out of control so I had to empty the dish and cut them off the food colouring, lesson learned: next time I'll limit the amount of food colouring poured on the salty ice. Either way the kids liked it, they thought it was cool how the ice was only melting where the ice was touching it and how quickly it was melting. Mixing the colours was fun and they learned how to make brown and black so successful! Another good activity for our gang.