Rainbow Ice Sensory Sink

I'm not sure why, but my daughter loves rainbows. She also loves sensory bins of all kinds.

 I put these two loves together and created this Rainbow Ice Sensory Sink.

This sensory activity is simple to create, and my daughter REALLY enjoyed it. If your toddler or preschooler enjoys sensory activities, then give this a try.To create the rainbow ice, simply boil a tea kettle full of water.  While it is heating up, put a few drops of gel food color into separate bowls so that there is one bowl for each color; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Once the water is hot, pour about 3/4 of a cup of it into each little bowl and stir to thoroughly mix in the gel color.  (Use a separate spoon for each color to avoid mixing colors.)Once the colored water is cool, pour it into an ice cube tray keeping the different colors separate. Then freeze until ice cubes form. Place the colored ice cubes into a sink, tub, or bucket of water. Use cold water in order to keep the ice from melting too quickly.  And it's as simple as that.  You can add other items to the sensory sink if you desire.  We kept it simple.My daughter loved trying to catch the ice cubes. At one point, I asked her to catch one ice cube of each color and set them up on the edge of the sink.  This allowed her to see the color draining down as the ice was melting.And it gave us the perfect opportunity to talk about colors mixing together to make a new color.Ever since this Rainbow Ice Sensory Sink, my daughter has been very curious about color mixing. The book Mouse Paints was a great resource for exploring color mixing even further.  See how we put that book (and some paint) to use here.And to see more activities like this, check out my Rainbow Study board on Pinterest.