Everything you need to know about the letter Ii

 It's pretty simple really - letter Ii is for ice cream.  What more could you possibly need?

Okay, I'll admit, there's more to it than that, but, if you include ice cream in your letter Ii learning this week, I can almost guarantee your child will be thrilled!

There are SO many ways to add ice cream to your learning: you could take a field trip to an ice cream parlor, and find the letter Ii in the signage.  YUM!  Look how lower case I kind of looks like a cone with a dot of ice cream on top!

You could make home made ice cream.  There's some measuring involved, plus reading the recipe, and the science of using salt to keep the ice frozen longer. This post includes my favorite ice cream recipe.

You could pick up a different flavors and predict which each family member will like the best, and make a graph about it - and then taste the flavors and find out which really is each person's favorite.

Add a fine motor aspect by finger painting ice creams - we made our paint with half shaving cream and half paint, which has a lovely airy texture - even when it dries!

We also make a hand print I is for ice cream, with confetti for sprinkles:

Since we've now clearly established that I is for ice cream, why not make a letter craft about it?

As you can see, we also made lower case letter i is for inch worms - so we learned the inch worm song and checked our marigolds to see if we could find any. (We didn't, but it was fun to look!)

Our last ice cream related activity is our sensory bin.  I save the empty tubs from our ice cream tasting, wash them, and add them to a huge tub of pompons for pretend ice cream.  Add a few scoops, bowls, or empty sprinkle containers, and you have a fun way to work those finger muscles while pretending you're making ice cream!

It's possible you need more ideas for letter Ii week, so here are a couple of other ways to explore Ii.  Make symmetrical iris paintings:

It's easy to do, just fold your paper in half, add a drop of each of 3 or 4 colors of paint right in the fold line, then close the paper.  Have your child rub and rub the place on the fold where the paint is, then open the paper back up.  This is a great time to talk about symmetry, and start looking for things that look the same on one side as the other (like faces, bodies, and even the letter Ii)!  If your child enjoys this activity, I have to say that a collection of the paintings makes a stunning art display!

Ii is also for instruments.  I've always had groups of preschool children - so I don't offer kazoos or flutes or anything that goes in their mouths.  There are plenty of fun percussion instruments - those that you bang on or shake!

It's also easy to make your own instruments - an inverted pot and a wooden spoon makes a good drum, a small container with a lid can be filled with small items to make a shaker, and you can make a kazoo with a piece of wax paper and a comb - go ahead and search it, you'll be amazed how easy it is!

Finally, if it's hot when you're learning about letter Ii, add some ice!  (If it's cold, check out this post with wintery ideas.) I like to freeze water in empty recyclable containers (if they break I won't be sad), and then put it in a sensory table outside on a hot day - you don't even have to get the ice out of the containers to keep the children occupied!  Figuring out how to get the ice out can be part of the fun.  I've seen children stack and build with ice blocks...

... add some polar bears, seals and whales to make your own "Arctic ocean", or freeze toys into the ice blocks for students to free from the ice:

For the best effect, freeze this block in stages: put in a little water and a couple of toys (or flowers, or whatever you come up with), wait until that layer is frozen, then add another layer.  You can build this up with as many or as few layers as you want, the block shown in the pictures above kept a group of 10 children occupied for almost an hour!

One more fun variation on ice play is to color your ice.  I make my own water colors to add to the water before I freeze it by soaking a dried up marker in a little water overnight.  All the remaining color in the marker leeches out, making some intensely colored water, which freezes into some gorgeous ice blocks! You can even make layers in different colors - let your child help you imagine all the possibilities! (Read more about ice play in this post from July 2014).

Okay, I guess ice cream really isn't EVERYTHING you need to know about the letter Ii - but it sure is a fun place to start!  I hope you and your littles have a lot of fun with these ideas, and I would LOVE to see pictures of all you get up to.  If you post pictures online, please please tag me @paulabeckerman2399 on Instagram, or Paula's Primary Classroom on FB.   Have an awesome week!