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Colour Activity – Coloured Ice Boats

Colour Activities - Coloured Ice Boats


Coloured Ice Boats is a fun sensory activity for children to explore colour.  As the ice melt it creates coloured water to mix and make new colours.  It is also an opportunity to play imaginatively and creatively.

What you will need? 

Sensory colour Activities Coloured Ice Boats


You will need ice cube trays, food colouring, ice cubes, plastic trays, foam pieces for the sails, blu-tac and straws cut to size.  The straws are used to make part of the sail and the blu-tac is used to hold the straw in place as the water freezes.

We added other matching coloured items to each tray to add to the sensory experience such as bottle tops and gem stones.

Tip:  sit the coloured ice boats on the bench to thaw out a little before removing from the ice cube tray.

Let’s Play 

Colour Activities for Toddlers and preschoolers


Some Ideas 

  • Pretend and play imaginatively.  Add some toy characters to the play opportunity.
  • Place one blue and one yellow ice boat into a separate container and see what happens.
  • Create an imaginative play scene: Use the gemstones to create a pretend island and the clear ice cubes are sharks or other sea creatures.  The ideas are endless!
  • Ask questions:  what two colours mixed together will make purple or orange?

Let’s Learn 

Mixing Colours with Ice Boats


This activity is great for mixing colours together and making new colours.  Once all the coloured ice has melted and mixed together is becomes brown coloured water.

Learning Opportunities

  • Creativity
  • Fine Motor Development – Pre-writing skills
  • Hand-Eye Coordination and Control
  • Cause and Effect
  • Concentration
  • Language development
  • Colour recognition
  • Sensory – exploring the world around us through our senses

Find more COLOUR activities <CLICK HERE>


6 thoughts on “Colour Activity – Coloured Ice Boats”

    1. Hi Emma, I am a little puzzled as to why the colours separated and I am unsure what I could suggest, sorry! I did used liquid food colouring and used more colouring than I usually would to really get the depth in colour. I also placed the food colouring into a small jug and stirred it well before pouring it into the ice cube trays. Not sure if this helps but I am interested to find out why the colouring separated though…. good luck 🙂

  1. This activity looks very inviting, I had the same problem as Emma@ P is for Preschool, my colour stayed in one part – did you use liquid colour? One quick question where did you get those nice coloured trays? All the ones I find are white.

    1. Hi Carissa, I am a little puzzled as to why the colours separated and I am unsure what I could suggest, sorry! I did used liquid food colouring and used more colouring than I usually would to really get the depth in colour. I also placed the food colouring into a small jug and stirred it well before pouring it into the ice cube trays. Not sure if this helps but I am interested to find out why the colouring separated though…. good luck 🙂

    2. Sorry, I didn’t answer your question about the coloured trays. I will be selling them here on learning4kids in about 3 weeks time but if you are keen to get hold of them sooner, I got mine from Educational Experience. 🙂

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Picture of Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

My name is Janice and I am an Early Childhood Teacher in Australia.

I have a strong passion and love for teaching and creating meaningful learning experiences for my students. What I love most is watching children discover in those amazing light bulb moments. I hope Learning4kids brings you some useful ideas.

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