Preschool Valentine’s Painting on Ice

Last Updated on January 25, 2024 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: This preschool Valentine’s painting is a blast! Freeze water into a big heart tray and shake paint on top. Watch what happens when it starts to melt!

Are you looking for something a bit different than the usual Valentine’s crafts for your preschoolers? Well then, you will LOVE this preschool Valentine’s painting on ice activity!

Actually, we’ve thought outside the box before with Valentine’s ideas. We have painted hearts using a salad spinner and also with frozen confetti paint. These open-ended activities are a nice break from the traditional cut-and-paste holiday crafts.

What are your preschoolers’ favorite Valentine activities? Please scroll down and let us know in the comments section! We love trying new things!

Preschool Valentine’s Painting on Ice

The inspiration for this activity came from our ice painting for kids post. I never dreamed how popular this idea would become. It’s by far our most pinned activity on Pinterest. So, I decided to freeze water in heart-shaped pans and add powdered paint this time.

What you will need:

• A heart shaped pan
• Powdered tempera paint
• A container for the powdered paint. (We used spice shakers.)

(Note: If you want to use watercolors or tempera paint rather than powdered paint, check out this post!)

Getting started:

Fill the pan with water and freeze.

Place the powdered paint in some sort of container. It can be poured using a spoon or shaken from a container, as we did.

(My co-teacher found these plastic shakers from the dollar section of some store.)

Valentine’s Painting on Ice: Let’s go!

Because we are always thinking about ways to work the fingers for future writing, we chose to use cotton swabs. You could use paint brushes, though.

Shake the powder tempera paint onto the ice.

We used several colors so we could watch them mix as the ice melted. Then, mix the powder with the water that begins to form as the ice melts.

We then gave the preschoolers a piece of paper.

They brushed the colors onto the paper. Some of the powder paint had not yet absorbed into the liquid, so it landed on the paper as well.

The preschoolers noticed that the longer they worked with the heart-shaped ice, the more liquid they were dealing with. Eventually the ice started cracking. A great science activity!

Here are more Valentine’s ideas for young children:

Foil Valentine’s Hearts

Valentine Bags for Toddlers

Toddler Heart Suncatchers