a peek inside the fishbowl

13 Jan, 2012

A drop of red and a drop of blue – icicles for me, icicles for you

Posted by andrea tomkins in: - Ottawa for kids|Easy ways to make kids happy|File under crafty|Publishing/writing/career stuff

This week’s kid-friendly activity (admittedly I am stretching the definition of “craft” here) over at Canadian Family Magazine is a wee DIY for Rainbow Icicles. You can read it here.

Behold!

rainbow icicles

In case you’re wondering, these are not designed to be edible, although I suppose you can make them out of juice or Jello. (But then you run the risk of your icicles being licked by squirrels when you’re not looking. And that’s simply not an option for me.)

Don’t be deceived by this craft’s simplicity. I will say this… the girls really got involved and enjoyed the process. AND, as an added bonus, this is one of those activities that (a) don’t take very long and (b) makes minimal mess and (c) uses stuff you probably already have lying around the house, and (d) is ideal for people who want to make things with their kids and don’t have a crafty bone in their body.

Note: I couldn’t convince the kids not to use yellow food colouring. Our one yellow icicle looks like a brick of frozen pee… as if the doctor left all the urine samples outside during a deep freeze and tied them to nearby trees in a fit of insanity.

Oh well. ;)

p.s. Speaking of frozen ice, we are going ICE FISHING in February! Neat eh? Strike another one off the bucket list! More about that later. Woot!


7 Responses to "A drop of red and a drop of blue – icicles for me, icicles for you"

1 | Heather @smart_spaces

January 13th, 2012 at 2:21 pm

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Andrea, I love this idea! So creative and fun.

2 | Mary @ Parenthood

January 15th, 2012 at 1:55 pm

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That icicle doesn’t look like pee to me! I think it looks pretty. I guess maybe very dehydrated pee of a person who has too much yellow dye in their diet… ;)

3 | Valerie

January 16th, 2012 at 12:04 pm

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thanks for the link – this looks like fun. From your picture here, I thought you’d used big drink glasses. Popsicle size would definitely be better. :)

4 | andrea

January 16th, 2012 at 12:11 pm

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Haha Mary – yes, it would be very dehydrated pee. Or dog pee.

Valerie – you could probably do this with any size container, but the popsicle size fit best in our freezer and makes a dozen at a time… !

5 | Molly

January 16th, 2012 at 3:42 pm

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You’ll often find pink, blue and red snow in our front yard….we fill up spray bottles and water guns (except we don’t allow guns in our house…so, how the heck did the water gun appear, anyway? gah! I digress).

Anywho, water, sprayer and food colouring. I definitely wouldn’t call it a craft but hours of fun, nonetheless.

6 | fern

January 19th, 2012 at 4:42 pm

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Funny you post this now. My colleague was telling me she did a similar thing with mini-muffin/cake tins (that were shapped like trees). In addition to using food colour, she also mentioned that she put cranberries in the mixture. Apparently since the tins weren’t all that thick, she put them outside to freeze and it didn’t take all that long! She used fishing wire or something like that to make loops so they would hang in trees. Plan to try this over the weekend!

7 | Kaitlin

January 22nd, 2012 at 2:42 pm

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I like the water gun idea! Liquid graffiiti! We used to add dye to snow and then pack it into buckets and build snow castles.

I wonder if someone would let me adopt their kids for an afternoon to do some of these activities?

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My name is Andrea and I live in the Westboro area of Ottawa with my husband Mark and our dog Piper who is kind of a big deal on Instagram. We also have two human offspring: Emma (24) and Sarah (22). During the day I work as a writer at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. I am a longtime Ottawa blogger and I've occupied this little corner of the WWW since 1999. The Fishbowl is my whiteboard, water cooler, and journal, all rolled into one. I'm passionate about healthy living, arts and culture, travel, great gear, good food, and sharing the best of Ottawa. I also love vegetables, photography, gadgets, and great design.

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