In Kentucky, there is one thing that December-March brings…unexpected weather. Typically, we are accustomed to getting a variety of temperatures and types of precipitation over the course of those months. However, we can always expect to receive some ice and snow at some point during the winter.
One winter we had a particularly long stint of snow and ice and so we took advantage by participating in some fun winter activities. One of the activities that was super easy to do was creating Ice Marbles. All you need are balloons, food coloring, water, and super cool temperatures.
To make the ice marbles simply fill up a balloon with water. These do not have to be water balloons, but rather your typical balloons will work. After you have water in the balloon then add drops of food coloring. The more pronounced you want the color, the more drops you will want to add. Also, we learned the hard way that mixing food coloring like you would mix colors did not really work in this experiment as we ended up with brown/black marbles instead of a mixture, so it is best to stick to one color. You will definitely want to assist your kids in this process as I can’t imagine anything much worse than water with food coloring splashing all over the place as a balloon is accidentally released.
Once you fill up the balloon with water and food coloring then simply tie the knot and place them outside. Let them sit overnight to fully freeze. You can check the status of the balloon by picking it up the next day to see if it is completely frozen or not. Once the water has frozen completely then you can use some scissors to remove the outside of the balloon from the ice marble.
Once the balloon is removed then you have a beautiful ice marble. Our kids used them to line our sidewalk as people came and they used them as decoration for our snow creations as we made them when we had snow as well. Obviously the larger you fill the balloon with water, the larger the marble is going to be.
