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.

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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