Scrape Painted Rainbows

We are really enjoying our ice activities lately. We have done some painting on ice with watercolours, painting on ice with paint sticks. We've done an ice rescue after freezing water beads and this week we did a frozen paint scrape rainbow. 

I am really finding sensory play to be a saviour at the moment as it captivates my children attention for the longest. So I am always looking for new ways to use medias they have enjoyed in the past. 

I had an ice cube tray that I carefully squirted the colours of the rainbow inside. I popped it in the freezer and left it a few days until the opportunity arose to do the activity. 

I am finding that setting up a few bits and pieces here and there really helps to have activities to hand. With my boys being 3 at the moment it can be very difficult to set up activities with them around so I try and prep as much as I can once they are in bed.

We had been playing out in the garden all day. I popped the Tuff Tray up, sellotaped some paper down to help secure it and prevent it from moving around. You really need to stick the paper down. It would have been very difficult to do scrape painting without the paper secured down as it would move around under the pressure of being scraped. 

We used paper which worked well but if you have card, that would be even better. It would help prevent any tears. Ours worked ok as I could leave them to dry before moving them. If you were planning on doing this activity with a group of children you would need to move the paper out the way quicker so card would be best.

I then got the paint sticks out of the freezer and placed them on the paper. My initial plan was that once the paint started to melt we could use our hands to move the ice stick around to make a rainbow.

Check out our Rainbow Window Suncatchers.

I literally blinked and the ice stick went from being a solid block of frozen paint to completely melted. I had some cardboard to hand so I just adapted the activity to suit and created a scrape paint set up instead.

Lets see this activity in action:

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If you don't have an ice cube tray you could just squirt your paint directly onto the paper. I do intend to do this activity again and try using the ice in time before it melts. If it doesn't work a second time it will be another opportunity to do some scrape painting again.

The children really enjoyed doing this. Even the boys who are 3 years old created some beautiful rainbows. Rainbows are a topic they are really loving at the moment. We recently made some rainbow sun catchers that I just adore. I have them up in the window and they look delightful when the light shines through them.

Once the rainbows had formed we went back the other way too. Not pressing down too hard to make the rainbows pop with colour and spread the paint out equally over the rainbow.

We left them to dry in the sunshine before carefully peeling off the tape. 

The children are keen to do some more scrape painting now so I shall be thinking of others ways to do this process with them over the coming weeks. 

Have you tried scrape art before? Would be great to hear from you if you have. 

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