Art: Antarctic Style

When life hands you ice....

.... Do ice painting, of course!!  If there is one thing Antarctica has more of than penguins, it's ice.  A layer of ice permanently covers 95% of the continent and can reach a thickness of a mile.  So you'd think that the only color as far as the eye could see would be white, right?  Actually, the ice reflects the sky and beautifully creates shades of blue that are amazing.

 

The water runoff when the ice melts, and the surrounding seas are so pure and clean that the water is the clearest shade of blue you'll see.  Cold, but beautiful.



So we made a project.

Antarctic Ice Painting
For the project you will need:

• ice cube trays or small disposable cups
• water
• blue food coloring
• white paper
• toothpicks
• cling wrap or foil

1.  Pour the water into the ice cube trays (or small disposable cups) and add a small amount of blue food coloring to the water to make various shades of blue.  So pretty.

2. Cover the tray with wrap and poke toothpicks through for handles.

3. Put into freezer.  Wait, wait, wait.

4. When properly frozen, use the ice to paint all over the paper to make beautiful shades of blue.  We went through a few sheets of paper just painting and then I drew an orca so we had an underwater scene to paint.

This is a very relaxing painting activity that would be great on a hot day or with different colors to show color mixing.  Clean up is easy and leftover "paint" can be used to cool off your drink :)

Cheers to Antarctica!