I have been wanting to try ice dying for a while now. A few years ago I made play scarfs for Capri for Christmas and they are one of our most used toys. That method involves boiling water and is not very kid friendly. Usually with ice dying you use actual dyes that are not safe for little ones to be using, so I decided to grab one more play silk to dye with kool-aid and ice (kool-aid doesn’t work on cotton just as an FYI).

We grabbed a foil roasting pan and cut some slits in the bottom, and put it on top of the lid that it came with with a bowl in the lid to keep the tin pan raised up. This allows the ice to melt through and the scarf to not sit in dye water.

After soaking our silk scarf in a vinegar water solution we laid it in the pan and covered it in ice. Thankfully we have an ice machine so this was easy for prep.

Once the scarf was covered in ice we grabbed our kool-aid packages.  The girls each spread a few packages across our ice and I used the last couple to fill in any blank spots.

Since it was a windy cool day we did our project inside which meant the ice melted slower. If it was not windy out we would have done it outside in the sun which would have speed up the process.

And the waiting game began. I had little girls climbing all over my table trying to stick their fingers in the ice and lick the kool-aid powder off (now it is important to note you have to use un-sweetened kool-aid so I am sure this did not taste good).

After the ice melted for the majority and all of the dye was on the scarf we took it out of the pan and rinsed it in cool water until the water ran clear.

After that we hung it outside to dry.

And this is our final product

We buy our silk scarves from The Dharma Trading Company. 

This week I decide to do a lot of fun things with Capri. It was storming out the other day so we decide to do some painting. I saw one of my instagram friends do this with her twins and I thought it was so smart. So I taped a piece of paper into our tub and gave her a bunch of finger paints. By the end she and I had painted all over her tummy and arms, and the tub was very well painted. She had a lot of fun, and clean up was really easy since she loves showers; I just showered her and the tub down when we were all finished. Just remember to take your taped on picture out before you shower the tub off, I just remembered it as I started the shower, but it was okay.

One night after supper, we still had an hour until bedtime so I decide to do a fun little project with Capri. I took our roasting pan and put baking soda in it, and took two bowls of coloured vinegar and we made science. I found an eye dropper in one of our drawers and we used that and a medicine syringe to squirt vinegar on the baking soda. It was a lot of fun until the eye dropper broke – some advice don’t use glass eye droppers with a 2 year old. Next time I will be more prepared and go and buy some plastic eye droppers.

This was a lot of fun because she had to learn how to squeeze the eye dropper to get the vinegar to go into it, and how to squeeze it to get it out again. We got to see the bubbles that happened when the vinegar hit the baking soda and watch the colors.

After the eye dropper broke I cleaned out the roasting pan and put some soapy water and a few dishes into it. I bought a little creamer from the thrift store so Capri could practice pouring, and for about twenty minutes we sat playing with soapy water and learning how to pour.

This was fun to do because it was not terribly messy and Capri was able to learn a lot during our time of playing. She had a lot of fun pouring water back and forth.

All three of these activities took very little set up and clean up time, and they all occupied her for a fair amount of time. I was able to supervise her while she did it, but I was also able to get some work done at the same time.