Frozen Paint
This is a really fun open ended art idea. I used liquid watercolors and water combined. You could even have your children help you with pouring the watered down liquid watercolor into the ice cube tray. For this activity I let the children use plastic pipettes to put them in the tray. In this way you can slip in a fine motor activity as well! Afterward we placed a popsicle stick in each cube before placing it in the freezer:
Here is a picture of our ice tray at the tail end of heavy use. Instead of dumping it out after the first time the children used it my assistant put it back in the freezer and pulled it out multiple times over the course of the next few days.
This is one child spreading the paint across his paper using the popsicle stick to push it.
Frozen Chalk
This is another open ended art activity that my students loved and we reused over the course of a couple days by refreezing. Whenever I can I always let the children make materials with me whether its play dough, salt dough, or frozen chalk. I use smaller measuring cups so that more children have the opportunity to pour ingredients and I always let them mix.
Frozen chalk is really simple to make. All you need is equal parts cornstarch and water. Add the food coloring to the water before mixing in the cornstarch.
I found these really cool ice trays at the thrift store and bought them thinking I could use them for some fine motor activity. They were perfect for freezing chalk!
Here's an example of how some of the pink frozen chalk worked out for them...
