Children’s Craft Idea: Freezer Pop Painting

Here is an incredibly simple craft project for the little ones that is perfect for summer.

If your children like to paint this is a really easy twist on finger painting that will hopefully get them excited.

You can literally freeze paint to make little paint popsicles.  Add sticks and the kiddos can use them to paint without the need for paintbrushes.

These little pops paint very smoothly and give you the same bright colors as regular paint.  It is over 100° and the girls painted outside for about 30 minutes or so and the freezer paint held up fine.

To make these little pops could not be easier and you probably have everything you need right at home.

Just click below for the complete instructions.

I took a fun star shaped ice cube tray (from the Dollar Spot at Target) and simply added Crayola washable fingerpaint.  This little stars are fairly small so I filled it up.

Next I inserted little cake pop sticks I had on hand.  You could also use skewers that you cut down (maybe tape off the ends so they aren’t sharp) or popsicle sticks or just leave as is.

Now this doesn’t have to be perfect and my sticks were upright for the time it took to take a photo.  Then they flopped over and that is totally fine.  It actually makes these easier to jam in the freezer and for the children to handle.

If you don’t have a little tray like this, you could also use mini Dixie cups or even rinsed out yogurt cups or maybe a muffin pan with cupcake liners would work.

I have a larger silicone tray and I made these again in the larger tray.  This time around the sticks just fell right off and made a mess.  So if you have a larger size tray not the small ice cube size, just skip the sticks altogether.

This particular tray I picked up at Pottery Barn Kids.    It is an ice cube tray and it is super handy for all sorts of things!

Freeze these for a bit.  I actually had them in the freezer for three days but I think about an hour might be long enough.

I pulled them right out of the ice cube trays and here is how they look.  Like little frozen crayons on a stick- these are the smaller ice cube size pops.  Now the kiddos can use these on the sidewalk like sidewalk chalk or use them on  craft paper outside.

And the girls painted away! These glide really nicely and as long as you don’t water down the paint the colors will be nice and bright.

And here are the larger size pops straight from the freezer:

Now when I used the smaller tray and added the sticks and we painted on paper, it really wasn’t a very messy project.

But we did this craft again a year later with the larger silicone mold and no sticks and the kids finger painted on the sidewalk.  They really had a lot of fun with this but I want to be completely clear it was crazy messy 🙂

My 5 year old especially is always a mess when it comes to crafts and she loved squishing the paint and smearing it and smooshing her feet in it.  I thought it was worth it because they had a great time and I actually painted a bit myself and thought it was really fun.  It was 107 outside so the paint melted really quickly but we still spent almost an hour decorating the sidewalk.  Then I stripped the girls down and popped them straight into the shower.

Washable paint so no harm done.

So if you are looking for something a little different to do with the kids give this a shot!

You can find zillions of silicone trays from Amazon here–  these do come in handy for all sorts of things.

And here are a few other projects you might like:

Easy Homemade Crayons

How to Make Bouncy Balls – that really bounce!

How to Make Colored Rice