MOMday: Snow Painting

Here's a fun activity that only requires a few supplies and is a ton of fun for the kiddos.  SNOW PAINTING!

Supplies:

• Snow (supplied for free by nature if you live where it snows)
• Squeeze and spray bottles (free and up)
• Water
• Food colouring (or old washable markers - I'll explain in a bit)

On a recent snow day,  I set to decorating the outside of my house but needed a fun activity that the midgets could do while I worked.   I rounded up an assortment of squeeze and spray bottles, filled them with water and added a few drops of food colouring and told them to go paint.

Tip: fill the bottles BEFORE adding the food colouring.  You only need a few drops and it is easier to gauge strength when adding to water instead of adding too much colouring and needing to dilute later.

They had a ball!

I changed their world forever when I taught them that they could write letters in the snow with the bottles!   The favourite colours seemed to be the richer shades like purple, blue and green and I ended up making many many many bottles of these colours as we went.  Luckily it is really fast to do!



The only downside of this activity happened to be that the food colouring totally stained Buggies skin (Doodle is much cleaner)! It took a few days for the blue and green splatters to fade from her face.   I later read that it is possible, with a little prep time, to turn old "dried up" washable markers into watercolour paint by simply setting them to soak in water until the colour bleeds out into the water.   Gives me a good reason to save our old washable markers for future re-purposing like this.

Another Tip: Wash any clothing right away.  The food colouring will wash out as long as it isn't allowed to dry on the clothing.

So, next time you are looking for a fun activity for a milder winter day - I totally recommend doing this with your kids.   Mine had a blast!