Painted Snow

We’ve got a perfect amount of snow in the yard – enough so we can make piles and sculp and climb but not so much that we don’t have any open space left.  During our daily outdoor play time the preschoolers have packed well-defined trails through the yard.

The school age children rarely have enough time to play outdoors and they had not been out in the yard since the snow began to accumulate.  They were amazed – they are taller now.  They don’t have to step up onto the logs (can’t find some of the logs). Sitting on the benches is a different experience too.

Yesterday I decided to bring out some liguid watercolor.  Our previous experiences with this product – which you can read about here – were somewhat disappoining.  However, on the white snow the watercolors are vivid.

I was expecting the children to do more ‘art’ and create pictures with the paint.  Instead, they were more focused on ‘science’ using the liquid to make ice on the slope of the little hill so it was slipperier for sliding on.  They like to use the old cookie sheets for this;

There was some more science going on in the corner of the yard too as two young girls dug a hole in which to mix their colours in;

Then they mixed it up to create little clumps of coloured snow which they called ‘gems’.

And of course the children saved all their running and jumping energy for when we came back inside