Activities to Celebrate Ice Cream Month

It shouldn’t come as a surprise (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) that July is Ice Cream Month. I think we all reach for this tasty treat more when it’s hot outside, and it’s definitely hot outside!

To celebrate Ice Cream Month you can head to your favorite ice cream shop, or make ice cream yourself (try this easy recipe with a science experiment built in from 123 Homeshool 4 Me) and sink your teeth into these fun ice cream themed activities.

Mrs. Plemon’s Kindergarten has a whole ice cream week, complete with children’s books to read, fine motor activities like placing cut up straw “sprinkles on a printed cone, gross motor skills like a relay, snack ideas (with ice cream, of course!) and sensory bins. So fun for a classroom or just a kid or two.

Look We’re Learning has a unit study on ice cream, too, which includes printable notebook pages, fun ice cream facts and a collection of ice cream themed activities.

Speaking of sensory bins, this ice cream dramatic play begins with a box full of tissue paper ice cream scoops that would also be fun to play with as a sensory bin. Get all the details from Entertain Your Toddler.

Or make a taste-safe sensory foam toddlers can play with, make ice cream cones with along with other supplies, or just squish in their hands. The recipe is from Powerful Mothering.

Give the classic erupting volcano activity a summery twist by using a cone for the, well, cone. Check it out at Kindergarten Worksheets and Games.

Yes, these are Popsicles, not ice cream, but this printable I spy from And Next Comes L is too cute not to share.

Read the Mo Wilems book Should I Share My Ice Cream and play an easy ice cream sharing game with this idea from Sunny Day Family.

Work with patterns with these printable ice cream sheets from Preschool Play and Learn. Use balls of playdough for the scoops to add a motor skill boost (or use tweezers and pompoms). Or use the do-a-dot worksheets from Tot Schooling to work on counting to 10.

I can’t resist throwing in a craft, too, so check out these adorable pompom ice cream necklaces from Handmade Charlotte. So fun!

Looking for more Pretend play? Check out these Pretend Play Icecream shops on Amazon.

Several countries have a day set aside to honor and recognize their inventors, but Nov. 9 is a special one that’s known as Tag der Erfinder in German. It’s celebrated in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and it falls on Nov. 9 because that’s the birthday of Hedy Lamarr.

Hedy Lamarr is widely known as an actress but there’s a lot more to her story. You can get a little of it geared to little kids in the Little People, Big Dreams book Hedy Lamarr (32 pages, hardcover, published 2023 by Frances Lincoln Childrens Books, suggested retail price $15.99).

The book explores her birth in Austria and how she spent time when she was young coming up with inventions. She became an actress, married an arms dealer, made her escape to America and became an actress again.

But she also helped develop a frequency-hopping signal device for airplanes that was used by the Americans and their allies during World War II. That technology became the basis for wireless technology such as wifi and GPS.

While Inventor’s Day is a great time to learn about Hedy Lamarr, you can take this opportunity to check out books and do little studies on lots of different inventors. If there’s an inventor or an invention your child is particularly interested in, that’s a great place to start. It’s fun to think about all the things we use every day that didn’t always exist; someone had to invent them!

For a start here at Craft Gossip you can learn more about Garrett Morgan, who invented traffic lights; Maria Oroso, who developed a clay oven that could cook food without electricity; and more female inventors and scientists.

And for more general inventors’ fun, check out this inventors word search from Fun Findery (and another from Let’s Do Puzzles) or take a quiz on inventors and their inventions from Flanders Family Home Life.

Have you read?

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