I is for Ice Cream!

Easter gave us the motivation we needed to resume tot school activities, despite being home on quarantine. So we are finally continuing along with our alphabet!

Keep scrolling to see what we did this week, or click one of the links below to revisit similar themes from Honey Pot and Little M&M's tot school days.

I is for Ice Cream - 2016

I is for Insects - 2015

Letter I - 2012

Letter I - Fine Motor

I drew an "I" roughly onto paper, and invited Sweet E to fill it in with stickers, just to familiarize her with the letter. She just loves The Cat in the Hat book right now; we read it about twelve times a day. 😂

So she was excited to play with these!

Pattern Matching

I have been saving her food pouch caps for a long time! She sometimes sorts them by color, but I was so glad to come up with another activity with them. First I drew several patterns of ice cream scoops. Then I drew her a template of an ice cream cone, with three empty circles on top. She had to copy the pattern!

  

This was a great challenge for her! While she knows her colors confidently, she doesn't quite know right from left. So the bottom row often threw her for a loop!

I had about eight different pattern cards for her to complete. And she did them all, even returning to them once more during the week.

Color-Matching File Folder Game

I've used this folder game for all three kids; it's so old! The printable comes from FileFolderFun.com. Sweet E enjoyed matching up the ice cream cones by color.

Felt Ice Cream Cone Math

I had done an addition game during our 2016 Ice Cream unit, with Honey Pot and Little M&M, but I wanted a simpler counting and number recognition game for Sweet E. So I cut more cones and scoops out with some leftover felt I had from other projects. Then I took a die from one of our games, with numbers up to twelve, and gave it to her to roll. She had to say which number was showing, and then add that many scoops of ice cream to a cone!

She impresses me with how much she knows!

I even had a couple red cherries to add to the top if she liked.

We played with this for a while.

And then kept building cones just for fun!

Marbled Painting

We've done marbled paintings before. I realized that if you do it right, it makes a beautiful swirl, reminiscent of swirled ice cream. So we gave it a try for this week's craft. First I filled a tray with dollar store shaving cream, and squirt some globs of paint on the top. Then I showed Sweet E how to swirl it around with a straw.

We did a few different colors. Big brother and sister also wanted to join, but kept their creations to cut out other shapes of their choosing.

After we swirled the paint to our liking, we pressed a sheet of white cardstock onto the top. We let it sit for a few minutes, then took a straight edge (we used a craft stick) to scrape off the shaving cream.

Here are everyone's finished products, sitting out to dry. A few hours later I cut ice cream scoops out of ours.

Sweet E helped me draw lines on some brown paper, and then glued the scoops onto the tops.

Then we hung them up on a door, and they looked super cute!

Look at that swirl!

   

Cherries - Alphabet Matching

Just a quick activity to review all the letters we've learned so far. I printed out some images from the internet, and put A-I on the cones. Then wrote A-I on some red circle stickers too. Sweet E needed to read the letter and place the cherry onto the matching ice cream!

Letter I Practice

I created this page for Sweet E to practice our letter of the week, by creating it in various forms. Tracing, writing, stamping and building.

She did fantastic! The writing we'll work on in the future... 😂

But she was excited to build it out of various materials.

And especially to use playdough!

Scissor Skills

I also printed those ice cream cones in a row for her to do some scissor practice!

This was quite a challenge for her, so she only cut a few at first. But she returned to it later in the day and finished them all! I was so happy to see her persevere!

Ice Cream Truck Lacing

I remembered this vehicle lacing kit I had picked up in the Target Dollar Spot many, many years ago. So I decided to pull out the ice cream truck for Sweet E to finish off our week. She did a terrific job!

Easter Activities!

We were able to do a few Easter activities over the last couple of weeks, despite our schedules being turned upside down by the covid-19 pandemic. The big kids are home from school, and have assignments to do here and there. So I wanted to try to keep Sweet E's tot school going too!

Keep scrolling to see what we did, or click on the links below to revisit similar themes from previous years:

Easter - 2014

E is for Egg - 2015

Easter - 2015

Easter Creative Table - 2017

Books

No library visits this week, as everything is closed, but here are some Easter and bunny books in our own collection. The "Duck and Goose" book is one of her favorites year-round! And we love the "Follow the Path" series. Each page has a path for little fingers to trace, making it such a fun and interactive book.

Dot Markers

We decided quarantine was an ideal time for potty training! So these next couple activities have no in-progress pictures, as Sweet E wasn't fully dressed lol. But here are some cute dot marker pages we did. The printables come from The Resourceful Mama.

Egg Scavenger Hunt + Alphabet Matching

Similarly, I have no process pictures. But I hid magnetic letters inside 12 Easter eggs, and placed them around the house for Sweet E to find. She loved doing this, and actually did it several more times throughout these two Easter weeks. When she found all 12 we brought them back to her table to crack them open, and then identify and match the letters. This was a nice review!

Playdough

We made a new batch of homemade playdough, and combined it with some of our Easter cookie cutters, tools and colorful store-bought playdough.

We made bunnies and eggs to stay in theme. But she also enjoyed rolling snakes and cutting them into pieces. And of course making "noodles" with her extruder tool.

  

Pattern Block Puzzle

We brought out the old pattern block puzzles that Honey Pot and Little M&M used to play with. She just loved them! We started out with the bunny puzzle, and she completed the whole thing!

And potty training was a success! After 2 days of training, she began wearing underwear and was accident-free. If we accomplish nothing else productive during quarantine, I'll be satisfied that at least we've done this lol.

Painting Eggs

This was a fun craft for all three kids (and me)! I printed several egg templates from First Palette and provided the kids with six pretty spring colors of paint.

Sweet E did a great job, and continued on to do a few eggs.

Later Little M&M joined, and he completed I think four of them!

And finally, Honey Pot joined us and completed two more!

 

When they had dried, we cut them out and taped them to the windows alongside our front door. They looked great!

Cut and Paste

Next I printed an activity from Planes and Balloons, to help Sweet E work on her gluing and pattern-matching.

She loves glue!

Pom Pom Transfer

Next Sweet E enjoyed some fine motor practice, transferring pom poms with a small pair of tongs.

Super simple, but she did this a couple times.

Sound-Matching Game

I did this activity in previous years, and it was always a lot of fun! First I filled some Easter eggs with various materials I had around the house that would all sound different. Two eggs per sound!

Then Sweet E had to pick them up and shake them! (With a younger child, or a toddler who still puts things in their mouths, definitely tape up the eggs first.)

She had fun shaking them all to try to find a match! I found it easiest to say for example, after she picked one up, "That one sounds like a bell. Can you find the other egg that sounds like a bell?" And we were able to get through all six pairs this way.

Pattern Matching

This is another activity I've borrowed from our previous themes. I drew a picture of mismatched eggs, and Sweet E needed to put the eggs back together in that way.

Kids have a lot of fun popping these eggs open and closed. So this occupied her for quite a while!

* * * * * * * * * *