Ice Cream Themed Learning Activities

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and one of the key components of summer for me is ice cream. Use ice cream as a theme in the classroom or at home to make summer learning more fun.

Modern Preschool has a set of ice cream alphabet letters is upper and lower case and shares a cute idea for writing practice in sprinkles. You can also do ice cream number matching with the printables from Fun with Mama.

This Reading Mama has an ice cream themed project for sorting letter sounds, and Playdough to Plato has an ice cream ten frame and number matching activity. The Measured Mom has another printable ice cream counting activity for helping kids count from one to ten.

The Littles and Me has a super cute free ice cream printable packet that includes ideas for activities, a printable die for ice cream hopscotch, a recipe for ice cream dough and more.

Speaking of ice cream dough, check out this post from Lemon Lime Adventures where they tested several different kinds of ice cream dough made with conditioner, icing and other substances. The post explains the science behind them and how the kids liked them so you can choose the best for your family or do your own experiments.

Of course you’re going to want to make ice cream in a bag, which you can do with this recipe from I Can Teach My Child, or turn it into a science experiment with the printable worksheet from 123 Homeschool 4 Me. You can also test your kids with an ice cream taste test like this one from No Time for Flash Cards.

And if you want some ice cream crafts, you can decorate your own ice cream cones with this cut and paste activity from krokotak, make puffy paint and paint ice cream pictures from Crafty Morning, or do a printmaking project like this one from Artful Parent.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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