I’m excited to bring you a fun (and educational) post from my friend and lead preschool teacher to two and three-year-olds, Joanne. With Charlie entering preschool at the end of the summer, I thought it would be fitting to start having Joanne talk about things you can do with your kids at home, that are not only fun, but educational!
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The summer months bring along some of my favorite things in life: sprinklers fanning the neighborhood lawns, longer bike rides in the forest preserve and being able to use the heat as an excuse to eat copious amounts of ice cream.
The third Sunday in July is designated as National Ice Cream Day (this year it falls on July 15th), and this lady already has her spoon ready to celebrate! And this “holiday” helped create a week-long unit study in my two-year-old preschool class, because let’s face it – I like ice cream, but my kids LOOOVE ice cream.
By far, the most memorable activity that I do with my students is finger painting using ice cream. I can just hear the horrified parents out there crying out in terror “But that’s so MESSY.” It is, and that’s what makes it so much fun! (Helpful hint: dress the kids up in their bathing suits and do the activity outside. They can get their hands and feet dirty, then you can hose them down when they are done).
I get several types of ice cream – darker shades like chocolate and mint chocolate chip show up best, but you can always add food coloring to make the colors more vibrant. After spooning out a little of each flavor, the children watch as the ice cream transforms from a solid to a liquidy blob. As they work, we describe how the ice cream feels (soft, cold, lumpy, sticky) and how it tastes, because the best part of finger painting using ice cream is licking your tips clean.
Another hands-on (read: messy) art activity that we do during this unit is making a whipped ice cream scoop.
I add equal parts of shaving cream and glue into a bowl, and add a drop of food coloring. The children use their hands to mix this concoction all together and smear it onto a piece of paper. The children can draw in or glue a picture of an ice cream cone to complete their artwork. I’ve even done this activity with the tween summer campers, who are at that age where they think everything I do is lame. To my surprise, they enjoyed the activity as well:“Miss Joanne, this feels so WEIRD and SQUISHY” “It feels like melted clay, that’s awesome.”
For more of a structured art project, try the handprint melted cone activity. First, you or your child can cut out a brown triangle to create the ice cream cone. Next, paint your child’s hand any color and have your child press down on top of the cone to create a melted looking scoop. Repeat to create as many scoops as you’d like. Top with a red thumbprint cherry.
To incorporate ice cream math into the art lessons, I cut out triangles and circles in different colors (I use AutoShapes on Word to make the shape templates). If you have older children, give their fine motor skills a work out and have them cut. The children can identify the colors and shapes, count aloud using one-to-one correspondence, and to give an extra challenge, I play very simple addition and subtraction games with them before they glue the pieces together. You can also incorporate a little science into the activity by having the children mix paints to create various colors to paint on their cones.
Similar to the math activity, a table game that we play with during this thematic unit is the ice cream cone color/count game. Children can either use one-to-one correspondence to count out scoops of ice cream onto the cone, they can use classification skills to match like colors, or to simply name the colors correctly. I found this game at the First School website, printed off several copies (for the matching game) and laminated them for multiple uses.
To wrap up the ice cream unit, we make homemade ice cream. Most of the ingredients you’ll already have on hand, and the kids are amazed at how easy it is to make their favorite treat.
You’ll need:
2 tablespoons sugar
1cup milk or half & half
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 tablespoons coarse Kosher salt
1 pint-size Ziplock bag
1 gallon-size Ziplock
Lots of ice cubes
1. Combine the milk, sugar and extract into the smaller Ziplock bag. Seal tightly.
2. Next, put a few handfuls of ice into the larger Ziplock bag until it is half full and add the Kosher salt.
3. Place the small bag inside the large bag. Seal the bag and shake away for 5 minutes, or until the mixture turns firm.
4. Remove the small bag, and wipe the ends to remove the yucky salty taste.
5. Enjoy!
Library resources. Check out the local library to see if they have any ice cream books on hand. These are particularly popular in my classroom:
The Ice Cream King by Steve Metzger and Julie Downing
The Ice Cream King by Steve Metzger and Julie Downing
Phew! Clearly I wasn’t lying when I said I really enjoyed ice cream! Hopefully your family will enjoy these activities and work up a taste for ice cream as much as my students did.
Happy National Ice Cream Day!
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