Early morning Ice Sculpture made by the sculpture enrichment students

My goodness this was SO much fun!! In the middle of our 4 week after school sculpture class, it hit me that it would be cool to make an ice sculpture...the weather is perfect and I could work more color theory in with three dimensional elements.....so I set off to come up with a plan.

I raided the dollar store and Wal-Mart for any small,interesting shaped container that we could freeze water in. I found wonderful circle and rod shaped ice trays, little cups and flat plates. I had a decent stash of dried out markers I had saved that I figured would still bleed into water.

I took the kids outside one afternoon and brought the containers, dried out markers and lots of pitchers for water. They experimented with adding the markers to the water in each little container and created new colors by mixing markers. The black and the neon green marker were a HUGE hit!

I took over a space in our lunch room freezer and we planned to meet the next week about a half an hour before school. So bright and early we were putting our sculpture together in front of the school for display. It was fascinating to watch how the kids dealt with their hands getting cold (making art is uncomfortable at times!! ;)), the material changing and melting so they had to adapt their idea, working together as a team and seeing their hard work melt before their eyes. It was great to make art with them outside of the art room- a little change of scenery is always welcome.

I adored doing this! I was told that I have access to more freezer room (yippee!) so I plan to do this with more students during school hours. Until then, I will be saving those dried out markers.