Valentine Frozen Heart Art with Toddlers and Preschoolers

Inside: This frozen heart art is super easy and fun for toddlers and preschoolers! Simply freeze water using a heart mold, add paint, and press paper on top. A nice change from all the crafty holiday stuff!

The ice is back!

You recall our recent tree ice painting, right?

Well, this is the same process, except now we are adding an additional step that allows the children to actually take something home. We are pressing paper on top to make a heart print!

We also discovered that tempera paint works just as well as watercolors, if not better. Good news for those of you who have lots of tempera paint on hand!

Valentine Frozen Heart Art with Toddlers and Preschoolers

Watch the video:

What we used:

• Heart mold (the one I ordered is no longer available, but this one should work)
• Pink liquid watercolors or tempera paint
• White paper
• A tray to put the ice on while it’s being painted

Setting up this frozen heart art activity:

Allow time to freeze water in heart molds. Since we only had 1 mold and 10 children, we went through the process 10 times. Once we had 10 hearts, we were ready for the activity.

Place the frozen heart on a tray with paint and a paint brush.

Invite the children to paint all over the surface of the ice.

As the ice starts to melt, the paint will thin and there will be puddles (and that’s why we placed the heart on a tray).

Then, take a piece of paper and place it on top of the painted ice.

Have the child press and pat the paper. This is a fun sensory experience as the hands can feel the cold through the paper.

Pull the piece of paper from the frozen heart art and you will see a heart print!

Using tempera paint:

As with using watercolors, apply paint all over the frozen heart. The thicker the paint, the darker the print will be.

Press the paper on top of the painted heart, peel paper off, and there’s your heart!

The tempera paint heart is clearly darker and more vibrant than the watercolor heart, the the process for both is similarly fun.

You don’t have a heart mold? No problem!

Try our basic ice painting!

 

More Valentine’s activities: