There are two ways to do this project. You can use food color in water to make your own liquid watercolors, or use actual liquid watercolor. Fair warning, the food coloring version is more likely to stain hands and clothes. (Ask me how I know.) It was survivable though, and honestly all of our snow clothing came clean in the end. Also - they really enjoyed mixing up the colors since we made them ourselves. That was definitely part of the fun for them!

This could totally have gone on the art page, but since we did it outside and they build things out of the snow, I figured I’d list it as an outdoor project. Nearly everything I post about overlaps! We do everything possible outside, and I try to add elements of sensory play to many projects. I’m a big fan of “work smarter, not harder”, so I integrate multiple experiences and teaching moments into every single project or activity that I can. Why teach or experience one thing when I can cover multiple bases?

We began this by mixing food coloring with water, and the kids loved seeing the difference in adding just a few drops or a lot of drops. They also loved mixing colors together to see what they ended up with. In the end, we had nine cups of homemade liquid water colors.

After our mixing session ended, I took the brushes and the cups of color outside, and let the kidlets go to town on the old, trampled, dirty-ish snow. We had played in the snow for so many days already (we did this towards the end of winter), and they were seeming a little bit bored. This gave new life to the snow play!

They repeated this three days in a row. We just kept what was left of the water colors and used them until they ran out on the third day. In my book, that’s a great success!

It required ten minutes of prep (which was also a teachable moment with the color mixing) for three days of outdoor play! We will definitely repeat this. As the children grow and their art skills and creativity grow, I imagine this activity will evolve and still be fun year after year.