Ice-Painting + a Valentine's Scavenger Hunt

some February fun for ya 🧊🎨🥰

Hello! It feels strange suggesting fun things to do when so many people are dying, hurt, and grieving in Turkey and Syria. I don’t know what to do with such tragic news, but I think it’s healthy to take time to be sad and cry. Consider donating to an organization doing relief work with high ratings on CharityWatch or Charity Navigator; there are lots of options that seem to be doing good work.

Today we do have some ideas for things you can do as a family. I hope they’re points of connection for you and your kids.

Valentines Scavenger Hunt

Here are some punny Valentines you can print out and hide in a constrained space in your room. You can choose the size of the cards by adjusting the scale % on your printer. We made a large-sized batch for younger kids and a small-sized batch for older kids and grownups.

The fun thing about these scavenger hunts is that you can play them again and again, hiding the cards for your kids to find, then letting your kids hide the cards for you to find. Invite friends over for this one! A friend and I had a fierce competition trying to find the cards that our kids hid for us, and they were all tickled to see two grown women scouring picture books and the LEGO bin for little pieces of paper.

Here’s a PDF of the printable cards; there are 16 in total!

Valentines

1.05MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Ice Painting

Do you have a freezer (or live somewhere with sub-freezing temps)? If so, there are lots of options for fun things you can do 😅 (We shared a few last month.)

Fill up baking pans and cookie sheets with water and freeze. Then take them out, lay them against a tree, and you have canvases!

Using watercolors or washable paints, encourage your kids to decorate their ice-canvases. (We also used paint sticks!)

When the ice starts melting, your painting might start deteriorating too, but that’s interesting to watch anyway! Finger-painting works, too!

Another option is to fill up a bowl with water and use that as your 3-D canvas. A way to make that extra special is to put a flashlight (or phone flashlight) facing up inside a plastic container, put the lid on it, and then place your ice dome on top.

If you add salt and start to paint, you’ll see colorful channels form in the ice. It’s super entrancing, even for grownups!

I hope you have the chance to try and enjoy some of these ideas! Frozen water can be a toy, a canvas…what else can we do with ice? 😅 Have a great weekend.

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts