Letter I is for Ice cream

Letter I for Ice cream!


We start with the letter recognition.
We lay out the letters (alphabet cards) that they worked on so far, which is A through I in this case. We place them on the floor and have the kids pick a letter, you pick one as well, (if the new/introduced letter is not chosen by the kids the adult usually grabs that letter) Have them run around and sing "we're running, we're running, we're running in a circles."

  Then you yell out "stop!" or "freeze!" This is where they place the card on their head and we ask: "What letter do you have on your head?" or "What letter do I have on my head".

It seems to work with our kids so far they learned their letters this way.

Then we go straight into our do-a-dot activity. The kids dot around the letter I.

Next up is letter hunt. Sometimes I find perfect objects for our activities. How are these cute little ice creams I found for our letter hunt? One container includes ice cream erasers and the other ice cream magnets.

Find letter I on the page. You can download the page here.

The little kids are learning patterns. Go ahead and download here. If you are just starting patterns, say the pattern out loud and have the kids finish it with you. You can also have them finish it themselves, or if they are advanced, have them work on it alone and then review it after they finish. 

For Art Jar we made colorful popsicles. Please, see this post  for instructions. 

We created number order 1-5. Have the kids put the numbers in order and create a yummy ice cream!

You can download Ice cream 1-5 here.

For more math, we counted ice cream flavors. 

You can download Ice cream counting here. Have the kids count the ice cream flavors and place the same amount of objects underneath the ice cream. We used small marshmallows because we didn't have enough magnets or erasers. 

And how about making your own ice cream? Here is a link to a separate post that gives you detailed instructions. Yummy!

This letter was too much fun! Enjoy and don't forget to check out some of the letter I books listed below.

 

Make your own ice cream

For our treat on letter I day, we made ICE CREAM!

You will need:

ziploc bags - 1 sandwich size, 1 gallon size


For the sandwich size bag:
1/2 cup of whole milk
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla


and for the gallon size bag:
1/2 bag of ice
6 Tablespoons of rock salt

We wrote kids names on each of the bags so they don't get mixed up.

Have the kids help you measure the ingredients for the sandwich bag.

Put the vanilla in.

Then pour the milk. Ask the kids to tell you when to stop.

Put the sugar in, close up the bag and have the kids carefully mix it by gently squashing the bag.

Get the ingredients ready to the gallon size bag. Pour the ice into the gallon size bag and add the salt.

Place the small ziploc bag (make sure it's really closed tight) in the large ziploc bag and close the big bag up. Now comes the fun part for the kids - shake the bag for about 5 minutes. We had to help as their hands got cold from touching the bag.

You might have to add few minutes to the shaking and stop when the consistency reaches the consistency of ice cream. 

Squeeze it into the bowl and your dessert is ready!

Tissue paper popsicles

As an art project during the week for letter I, we made tissue paper popsicles (I is for Ice cream). 

You will need:

glue

card stock paper

popsicle sticks

different colors of tissue paper

First kids glue the popsicle stick to the paper. Then they put the glue above the popsicle in a shape they want their ice cream to be. in this case we made a circle. We helped the little kids.

Then we gave the kids different colors of tissue papers. they love the variety! We always save tissue papers from presents for times like this!

Kids pick the tissue papers they want, crumble them up, and place them on the glue that's on the paper.

And here is the final product! This is so cute and colorful!

We also had the kids come up with new ice cream flavors! They each named the ice cream they made.

LEGO addition

Our boys like to build and LEGO is a big hit. So I had an idea to incorporate LEGO blocks into our math lessons. 

For this LEGO addition activity, you can just handwrite plus sign and equals sign on a white paper, give them some LEGO blocks and let them build their own equations.

Make sure you choose blocks that are suitable for the level your kids are comfortable with. If you give them bigger blocks, the addition will end up go over 10. But if you kids are advanced, give them higher numbers!

Have fun!

Letter H is for Heart

Letter H Heart activities can be easily used for Valentine's Day party as well!

After the kids learn to recognize letter H, we do a letter hunt. You can download the page here. It also comes with letters E, F, G, I, and J for future Letter Hunts. Simply have them place conversation hearts on all letter H they can find on the page.

For math, we are focusing on finishing patterns, so this is the perfect activity for that. You can download the Heart pattern here. 

If you are just starting patterns, say the pattern out loud and have the kids finish it with you. You can also have them finish it themselves, or if they are advanced, have them work on it alone and then review it after they finish. 

We created a Heart puzzle that you can download here. Simply print it, cut it up, and you can possibly laminate it if you wish.

Have the kids put it together.

In the next activity we combined color recognition and counting to 5. You can download Heart color number find here. 

You will be using the Conversation Hearts again. After counting the color hearts, have the kids find the same color hearts in their container and place them on the paper. Repeat until you cover all the color hearts on the page.

Our last activity is the Heart Hopscotch. You can find instructions in this post.

Flotsam

We read the book Flotsam by David Wiesner . This book actually has no words, so I am not sure if you can call it reading. We really told the story about the pictures in the book. It is a beautiful story about a boy on the beach, who finds a camera with undeveloped film in it. I love this book! As a follow up activity we created our own beach in a jar, using random things that could be found on the beach!

You will need:

glass jar with a lid

sand

sea shells

random objects that could be found on the beach

Have the kids fill up the jar with sand about half way to the top.

Then have them pick sea shells they like and the random objects they would like to find on the beach!

At the end close the jar with the lid and tighten it.

You will get some cute beach display!

More than a year later I still have mine displayed on a shelf!!!

Number recognition hopscotch

We are always trying to come up with new ways to teach the kids number recognition. Here is another idea we had!

Print number hearts from here (we laminated ours), place them on the floor in the wrong order and then have the kids jump on one at a time. As soon as they jump on one, they have to say the number they jumped on. If you would like to use this for teaching number order, just put them in the right order and repeat the previous steps.

You can use this as letter H activity or a part of you Valentine's Day theme!

More fun with baking soda and vinegar

We all know what to expect when we combine baking soda and vinegar. We mostly use it for volcano explosions. Here is a little twist to the experiment that makes kids scream (in a good way) and ask for more!

You will need:

see-thru containers

vinegar

food coloring

deep tray

spoons

baking soda

Pour pure vinegar into the containers. Have the kids pick their color and let them pour it in and mix. We also mixed red and yellow for orange and blue and red for purple. Place the containers in the deep tray.

Give kids some spoons and let them fill the containers one by one with a whole lot of baking soda (that depends on how much excitement you are looking for).

Watch what happens and imagine four kids screaming with excitement at the same time!

Now you see why you need the deep tray!

It was an ongoing excitement. We added more vinegar and that gave us more action. But try to add it only twice, it will not work the third time ;-) The colors are so much fun!