I is for Igloo

Don't limit yourself to gingerbread houses this year. Try making an igloo with your kids this season. For more specific instructions, click here. We used these exact instructions except we used Styrofoam cups that I cut short instead of cupcakes. 

A great book that goes with this activity is Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett. 

I is for Insect

I grew up with all brothers and we had a huge "wild" hill down the back of our yard. We spent a lot of time down there and as a result, bugs don't bug me much. (Hehehehe I crack myself up.) Except flying cockroaches. Gah! ross! I didn't even know cockroaches could fly until we lived in Arizona for a while and I was non too excited when I found out. 

   Anyway, we discussed insects during letter I week. We mostly talked about how insects have 6 legs and if they don't have 6 legs, they are a different kind of bug. 

   I found this awesome bag of bugs at our local party store. I did not realize what a treasure trove party stores are for preschool teachers who are looking for random little things that box stores only sometimes stock. 

  Well our bugs found their way into my daughter's bug jar that we made her for her birthday one year. (She doesn't mind bugs either.) 

  The kids had fun taking turns pulling out different bugs and then we sorted them into insects and not insects by counting their legs. It was great math practice and a lot of fun.

  My favorite part? When we were done and the kids just got to play with the bugs. According to my 2 year old son, cockroaches say rawr. I think it's pretty fitting cause those things are not my favorite. 

Here's a sneak peak into our life. My husband, also a bug enthusiast, is a teacher. His go to classroom pet? A praying mantis. Usually he just tells his students to bring them in and they find him one. Have you ever seen a praying mantis hunt and eat? It's pretty primal and very cool. Put it on your bucket list, it's worth seeing. 

Apparently there is a type of mantis that flies. He really wants to find one. 

Okay, back to preschool. Here is a two day project we did for letter I week. We did the insect i when we talked about insects and the ice cream I when we talked about ice cream. (You can check out that post here.) The pipe cleaners were a little hard to deal with so next year, we are just going to do paper legs. 

  

I is for Ice Cream

We had a lot of fun, ice cream centered activities for letter I week. 

We did an ice cream, number recognition. 

Each child rolled a 10 sided dice and colored the corresponding number. Click here for a free printable. 

Click on the ice cream math pdf. You will need to sign up to download. The small grey download button with the blue arrow is the correct link. 

We sang an ice cream song with felt ice cream cones.

(To the tune of 5 little ducks) 5 little ice cream cones in an ice cream shop.

But no one wanted to by them with vanilla on the top. 

So one little ice cream cone took some time to think.

She mixed in some bubblegum and turned herself pink . . . 

Click here for the full tutorial and full lyrics to the song. 

We made capital I, ice cream art. 

Click here  to see the insect activities we did relating to the second half of this project. 

At the end of the day I was really wanting some ice cream so we decided to do an impromptu field trip to the ice cream shop for the next class. (It was really a frozen yogurt place, but we'll take it.) The lady was so nice when she found out we were from a preschool. She showed the kids the freezers and the machines in the back and explained how everything worked.

 

Edible Igloos

Last year we made igloos using sugar cubes. You can see the post and directions here. They were pretty cool, but I decided to change it up a little bit this year and make igloos we could eat. This worked out so well and it was so easy for the kids.

Normally, we have a pretty healthy snack every day, but I can safely say that this snack was as far away from healthy as you can get. Mini cakes covered in icing covered in marshmallows. Can we say sugar anyone? To try to offset the insane amount of sweets, we had an extra long recess after this fun project. 

I started by baking cake mix into small glass bowls. I didn't use cupcakes because I wanted them to be a little bit bigger. I had the students work in pairs to make their igloo and we needed a little more room to work. You could easily use cupcakes and have the kids work individually. (These bowls held about a cup of batter.)

After I baked each one, I leveled the top with a knife and then flipped the cupcake upside down onto the plate to get a tapered look. 

To frost the cupcakes, I sniped a very small corner off of a sandwich baggie. You need to make sure to use the press to close kind and not the fold over because you don't want any extra folds at the bottom. I filled the baggies with icing and tied it with a rubber-band. The rubber-band prevents the icing from going up into the top of the bag when you squeeze it. This ended up being very helpful for the little ones. 

In class, the kids frosted and covered their mini cakes with marshmallows.They added a 2 X 4 tunnel for the door.

Then we cut it in half and ate it! It was a very successful and very yummy project.

As a side note, we read an awesome Goldilocks story to go with this project. The bears are polar bears who live in an igloo. The pictures are beautiful and the story is a fun twist to the traditional fairy tale. It is titled The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett.

Ice Cream Math

Ice cream is an essential part of our letter I curriculum. One of these years, we are going to make it during class. Maybe next year. : ) We did some ice cream math during our centers time using this picture I made. 

The kids rolled a 10 sided die and then colored the number they rolled. You could also use cards numbered 0-9 and have them pick a card. If you wanted to step it up a notch, you could take out 0 & 1 and add the numbers 10, 11, & 12. Then you could have them roll two regular dice and add the numbers together. Pretty easy and the kids were very engaged. 

I also made our ice cream song helps a little more fun and easy to use. (If you are wondering, what ice cream song? See this post here for more details.) I added felt cones to each vanilla ice cream top and then sewed a criss-cross design on the cone in a contrasting brown. (Man, I need a new camera. The design shows up a lot better in person ; )

As a side note, I teach the music time for the kids at our church and I was thinking this might be fun to use there too. I would put a song on the back of each ice cream cone and let them choose the cone to see what song we are going to sing. Just a thought!

5 Little Ice Cream Cones

We learned a new ice cream song that was a lot of fun. It was so fun in fact, that when I went to take a picture of my 5 Little Ice Cream Cones, I could only find 3 of them because my girls took them somewhere to play. I am sure the little lost ice cream cones will return some day.

I am not sure where this song originated, so I can't give credit but I have big plans to add some more verses for other colors. Like adding boogers to turn green (just kidding!)

I made a flannel ice cream cones in vanilla with an extra scoop in each color. As we sang the song, we put the extra scoop over the white. (To see our new and improved ice cream cones, check out this post here.)

5 Ice Cream Cones (To the tune of 5 Little Ducks)

Five little ice cream cones at the ice cream shop
But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top
One little ice cream took some time to think
He mixed in some bubblegum and turned himself pink
Little Suzie(student)came along And took that yummy ice cream home

Four little ice-cream cones at the ice cream shop
But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top
Then one little ice-cream knew what he should do
He mixed in some blueberries and turned his flavor to blue
Little __________ came along and took that yummy ice-cream home.

3 little ice creams at the ice cream shop
But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top
One little ice cream was a smart little fellow
He mixed in some lemonade and turned himself to yellow.
Little ___________ came along and took that yummy ice cream home.

2 Little Ice Cream cones at the ice-cream shop
But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top.
One little ice-cream got an idea in his head
He mixed in some raspberries and turned his color to red.
Little ____________came along and took that yummy ice-cream home.

One little ice-cream at the ice-cream shop
But no one wanted to buy it with vanilla on top
Alone and sad, he really wanted to go,
So he mixed in all the colors and made him rainbow!

Ice

We talked about ice during letter I/winter week.

We played Don't Break the Ice! - It was soooooo much fun!
We talked about descriptive words for ice as we handled ice cubes. The kids came up with ideas like: cold, hard, smooth, slippery, it melts, made of water. We talked about hot and cold being opposites. Then we looked through magazines and each found something that was cold and hot. I was very impressed with Trevor's idea. He said storms were hot because he found a picture of lightning. That's one smart cookie!

Igloos

This week for letter I we made igloos. We read the book The Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett which is a Goldilocks story that takes place in an igloo instead of in the woods. This was a good practice of fine motor skills and I thought the kids did a great job! It was an interesting project because we discovered that there is a fine line between too much glue (your "ice" starts to melt) and too little glue (your cubes don't stay together). When we discovered that too much glue makes the sugar cubes start to fall apart, Hudson started singing, "In the sun it melted, melted, melted . . ." What a cutie!


Here's What We Did:

What we used:
A lot of sugar cubes
White glue
3 oz. white plastic or styrofoam cups (we used a bigger size, and it took a long time and an insane amount of sugar cubes)
Blue or white paper plates

What We did:
1. Before class I glued the cups to the paper plates so they would be sturdy and dry when the kids started working.
2. We glued the sugar cubes around the base of the cup first. Then we built each layer up until we got to the top. You have to be careful not to use too much glue. Too much glue starts to make the sugar disintegrate. However, if you don't use enough, your cubes will topple. Just a happy medium works great! 3. We glued the cubes on the top and then added a 2 X 4 X 2 row of sugar cubes in front of the cup for the door.