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.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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