Build an Ice Cream Activity

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Let’s face it, while summer is a perfect time for ice cream, many of us would love it any time of year! While we probably shouldn’t eat ice cream every day, we have had a blast putting that interest into fun learning activities, like this fun build an ice cream activity. Work on fine motor skills, patterning, and counting while having fun!

Setting up:

You need:

Felt (I’ve used felt for this ice cream activity. You can use craft foam or cardboard as well). I cut light brown cones: two different shapes and ice cream scoops: 3 different colors, white/vanilla, green/mint, pink/strawberry.)
Pompoms (different colors and sizes) as cherries/sprinkles

This was added to a tray together with a plastic tweezer (these are great to have for fun fine motor work!)

Playing:

This activity can simply be “an invitation to play”, thus without adult intervention. Constructive learning will still happen when your child uses the tweezers to add the pompoms (fine motor skills), create an ice cream (visual perception on where and how to put the ice cream together) and creativity too!

Extension

With adult intervention, you could ask your child to complete a pattern with the scoops. For example, start by adding a “strawberry” and “vanilla” scoop of ice cream on a cone. Ask your child to carry on with the pattern.

This could be done in a playful manner too : “I want to order a strawberry and vanilla ice cream please”. Bringing the element of a pretend ice cream shop in will add extra fun to the activity.

One could “order” 3 scoops of ice cream, where your child will have to count out the scoops. Take it further and order another ice cream for a classmate or family member, but they want one more scoop. Here you are introducing the concept of more (plus/addition) subtly.

And “Oh, no look, one of my scoops melted, how many do I have left?” (Concept of minus/subtraction)

Older children can take orders in the “shop” and working on writing too. Paying for your ice cream can add more mathematical learning opportunities. For example: Each scoop costs $2 and I ordered 3, so I could use skip counting to solve: 2, 4, 6. I need to pay $6 dollars.

Your kids, from toddler to school-aged kids will have so much fun with this build an ice cream activity, and learn concepts while playing!