Winter Solstice Ice Art

If you are following along on our Facebook page, you will have noticed that we have a Sun Calendar in progress right now. Every day is a new prompt encompassing our reason for the season...which happens to highlight Christmas's ties to the Winter Solstice and the coming of the light.

I want to share some fabulous impromptu land art that followed from our Winter Land Art Tag. So beautiful and easy to do with little ones. I knew I wanted to create some artwork that could go outdoors that had to do with the Sun and the cold dark season we are in right now. We had just been gifted a box of oranges so the wheels in my head started turning...

It has been snowing for days so ice art that we could hang from the trees sounded perfect! Now fast forward and we are still waiting for the perfect temps to come back to us as come the next day and we are in the middle of a thaw, but we are enjoying the warm spell as we wait for our ice art to grace our yard.

Here you can see our set up. Let me walk you through the process. But first, talk about the outcome. In the end we wanted ice ornaments filled with natural pops of color and contrast that we could hang from the trees in our yard. I picture the late day sun streaming through these are nothing short of magical. As I held a frozen one up to the light late yesterday, I found this to be true! So...they function as gorgeous sun catchers. And as they melt they also provide food for our backyard friends.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

Empty Shallow Containers

Sliced Citrus Fruit

Birdseed

Bits and Pieces of Greenery and Twigs

Water

String

Tape

Cookie Sheet

I created simple stations for the kids so they had easy access to all the materials. Each of the kids had a few bowls near them filled with the slices of fruit, seeds, twigs, and greenery. Containers were spaced out around the table after I taped string onto them to make the hangers (see up-close photo below). Each container was filled part way with water. Then they were free to fill the containers with the materials as they saw fit.

The kids helped cut the twigs and bits of plants with their safety scissors as I cut the oranges and lemons. Keeping them busy when they are little is key, as we all know. But really after the simple prep was done we all just found our groove so to speak. My five year old figured out that the seeds in our birdseed mix floated while the peanuts included in the mix sank to the bottom of the container. So he set out to create a multi-tiered bird feeder ornament for the woodpeckers to peck at. While at the same time my toddler ditched the idea of making ornaments all together and had great fun making lemon and orange water to sample with her spoon. I combined efforts with my older child to create most of our pieces and couldn't be happier with the results!

After we were finished we brought the trays and containers out on the porch to freeze. This was working well until the great thaw happened. : ) But instead of having them melt quickly, we are waiting it out. You could always pop these in the freezer as well for a faster end result.

Hope you give these a try. Next time we may forage some winter berries too. Red and light blue would be amazing. I love these in so many ways and now have a reason to welcome in more snow.