In Home Entertainment: "Snow" Painting

We've seen a little bit of cold weather so far this year, but NO snow (save the snow mom ran on in NYC recently, which jacked up her knee, natch). And although it's entirely possible we'll get our fair share of February and March snowmageddons, just in case, mom bought us some fake snow to mix up. We could have approached this as a science experiment, and we did a little in the beginning, but we're not quite up to polymers just yet (although I think there is some of this in our new science kit). Instead, we decided to have fun watching it erupt (it literally grows up over itself once you add water) and then make some snow paintings.

Mom gave each of us liquid watercolors and eyedroppers with which to paint. It took us a little bit to get the coordination down, but then we went to town. And we actually painted for quite a while before one of us, I'm pretty sure it was Kane, decided to start painting by just pouring the watercolors on to the snow. And then a science experiment kicked in spontaneously -- we took turns balancing the mixture of liquid and polymer and changing the material back and forth between more of a slushy mess (we decided this was ice) and a fluffy snow (by adding more polymer).

I played for a while and liked making a rainbow of colors, but Kane was mesmerized for almost two hours.  He made igloos, forts and waged war between the "blue ice" and the "green snow." When I gave up and headed for the bathtub, he took over some of my purple ice and had a sneak attack on the blue ice. It only takes a little to make a lot, but we loved the colors we made so much, we insisted on saving them in airtight containers. And mom swears it wasn't as difficult to clean up as it looks -- it's basically the same stuff inside of diapers, though, and if you've ever put a diaper through the washing machine, you know how much fun that is. So she suggests making sure to rinse it off of your clothes first!

So take that, lame D.C. weather.