Ice Cream Party Math (a SMMARTidea)

Hello! I’m Lisa and I share learning activities for kids on my SMMARTideas blog (Science, Math, Music, Art, Reading and Time-out for Tidbits). I’m excited to share this SMMART Math learning activity with Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational readers!

Ice cream can be a great motivator for your child to demonstrate his/her math skills.  You’ll need some ice cream and little candies, marshmallows, chocolate chips … whatever you have in your pantry.

Display all the fixins in fun glasses and jars out on the table. Then, BRING OUT THE ICE CREAM!

Okay, now for the math. Have your kiddos answer math questions to earn candies and add-ins.

"4 + 6 = the number of chocolate chips you can add into your ice cream."
"50% of 12 is the number of gummy bears you can add to your ice cream."
"Count 7 lemonheads and put them into your ice cream ... good counting!"

Put the add-ins right into a large ceramic bowl and mix it up with two large spoons, then dish into waffle cones. 

I suppose you could even touch on a little geometry ... the cone shape of the ice cream cone, sphere shape of the malted milk balls, or oval jellybeans.

Cool summer fun!

- Lisa at SMMARTideas

Word Scramble with Letter Magnets

Unscrambling words is a fun activity for kids of any age. To make it easy for my son to move the letters around and try different sequences until he unscrambled the word, I made letter magnets. These were simple and affordable.

I used Microsoft Excel® to create a grid with letters in each square (download my template here). I printed the page on cardstock and using a glue stick, attached it to a recycled cereal box for sturdiness. Then I cut the squares out and attached a small piece of magnet tape to the back of each. For the magnet board, I used a cookie sheet.

The words he unscrambled were:

Zip

Rat

Kid

Hot

Cry

Jam

Play

Fish

Gold

Quit

Race (letters can also be reconfigured to spell ‘care’)

Run

Web

Fan

Nest (letters can also be reconfigured to spell ‘nets’)

Jet

Milk

Bump

I scrambled each of the words on the cookie sheet in groupings of six words, starting with three-letter consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words.

My son did great and only needed hints to get the words ‘gold’ and ‘milk’ unscrambled!

Erupting With Fun

Volcanoes are one of the coolest natural wonders; just ask any 5-year old. My son knew a little about their eruptions, but when I started to ask him more detailed questions like, “What is lava and where does it come from?” a blank stare was his response. To give him a better understanding, I figured we’d read a few books, make an eruption of our own, and journal about what he learned.

I got the recipe for making our “volcano” from Linda Hetzer’s book “Rainy Days & Saturdays.” Here are the steps:

1. Stir 1 tablespoon of baking soda into ¼ cup of water.
2. Using a funnel, pour the mixture into a plastic bottle; I used a 16.9 oz. water bottle, but a shorter bottle would work better.
3. Add a few drops of liquid dish soap.
4. Put the bottle in your kitchen sink.
5. Carefully add ¼ cup distilled vinegar to the bottle; keep your face away from the bottle top.
6. Watch the eruption!

We had all the ingredients on hand and making the eruption was a snap. My son was thrilled that our afterschool activity took us somewhere other than the table.

Our eruption was an impressive (yet slow) bubbly overflow.

Dowload this worksheet here.

After our eruption, my son cut out the scrambled instructions I’d typed up, read each step, put them in order, and glued them in his new journal. Then, we read Dana Meachen Rau’s book, “Volcanoes: Wonders of Nature.”

To wrap up our “science class,” I asked my son to write about a few of the things he’d learned in his journal. At the top of the page I wrote “What we learned about volcanoes …” He added two sentences about the things that surprised him the most: that lava is really melted rock and that volcanoes are mountains.

For another great book to read with your child about volcanoes, check out Gail Herman’s “The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top: A Book About Volcanoes.”

B D P Q Practice

Curse those darn lower case letters that look similar; they’re always tripping my son up. He’s mastered ‘p’ and ‘q,’ but ‘b’ and ‘d’ are a different story. To do some drills with him, I made a spinner featuring all four of these letters (download the template here).

I printed the first page of the spinner on heavy-duty colored construction paper, the second on regular office paper. Then I glued both to a recycled cereal box for sturdiness, cut them out, made a hole in the center, and threaded a brad through the center.

When he came home from school, I gave him the spinner and quizzed him asking:

What does (one of the words listed below) start with?

Quail

Dab

Pop

Dog

Bad

Quick

Play

Dunk

Ball

Door

What does (one of the words listed below) end with?

Map

Mad

Scab

Stop

Dab

Bad

Bob

Sob

Said

Lap

I randomly switched between the starts with/ends with questions so my son would have to listen carefully. To answer the questions, he turned the spinner to the appropriate letter.

I’d like to thank the I Can Teach My Child blog that inspired this idea.

Will it Float or Sink?

When I picked up Melissa Stewart's "Will it Float or Sink?" at a yard sale, I knew the book would be the springboard for a fun afterschool activity. I was right.

To prepare for our experiment, I gathered some things from around the house and a big bowl from the kitchen. I made two columns in my son's journal with the words "Floats" and "Sinks" at the top. All that was left to do was wait for school to get out.

When my son got home, I explained the experiment and invited him to add a few things to the pile of items we were going to dunk. Then I asked him to explain to me what "float" and "sink" mean and to predict what things would sink. He told me that the bigger stuff would sink. To his reply I said, "Let's find out."

One by one he tested each thing (action figures, a ball, plastic and metal spoons, a marker, screw, etc.), pausing afterwards to write the item down in the proper column of his journal. When we'd finished, he drew his own conclusion: "All the metal things sink!"

We read the Rookie Read-About Science book together to find out why and learned about matter. After reading the book, he turned the page of his journal where I'd written "Things that float ..." He completed the sentence by recapping what he'd learned: Things that float 1) are lighter than water or 2) filled with air.

This was an easy activity that my son really enjoyed. The only advice I can give to those who replicate this is to make sure to roll up your child's sleeves first and have some towels ready. Happy experimenting!