The Letter I

The Letter Ii.

We did a lot of fun things with Letter I.

We did the short i sound one day, as in igloo, iguana, it, etc. And we did the long I the second day, as in ice cream, ice, etc.

First we made I iguanas. I cut letter I's out of green construction paper and gave the kids google eyes, a head, tongue, and tail. Mr. T. was home and made one too, he wanted his to have a REALLY long tail, and he wanted me to take a pic for the blog. His I iguana was pretty cute. :)

 We had a great variety of iguanas. Some added color or other embellishments, body parts were in different places, etc. I like art that kids can make into their own. 

We did a little icecream painting. I just took my regular tempera paints and chose a few "ice cream" colors and added some scents to them for a sensory experience. I added peppermint to green, vanilla to white, cocoa powder to brown, and raspberry to pink. We found this very cute idea at

Preschool Express. 

 Miss B. had a day off from school and joined us. She is my perfectionist artist. 

The kids had so much fun painting that their ice cream art did not look very much like ice cream after they finished, but they had fun, so that is the most important part. 

We had a mock icecream cone snack one day. Half of a banana with three vanilla wafer scoops. You can serve this with our without a little frosting

We played an ice cream scooping game. I found red and pink poms poms to be the cherries, and they had to use a spoon to transfer them into our banana split trays. (idea found at Everything Preschool)

For story time we had some felt fun ice cream shop. I cut out triangles our of tan felt to be the cones and I cut out scoops in as many colors as I had felt.

We found fun icecream poems, songs, and stories at a few places:

Preschool Express and  Preschool Education. 

This one was my favorite, and I found it in a handful of places.

Five Ice Cream Cones

Five ice cream cones at the ice cream shop 

But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top 

One little icecream took some time to think 

He mixed in some bubblegum and turned himself to pink 

Little (child's name) came along and took that yummy ice cream home 

Four ice-cream cones at the ice cream shop 

But no one wanted to buy them with vanilla on top 

Then one little icecream knew what he should do 

He mixed in some blueberries and turned his flavor to blue 

Little (child's name) came along and took that yummy ice-cream home

Three 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 (child's name) came along and took that yummy ice cream home

Two 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 (child's name) 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 his shade rainbow! 

Note: You can also do this as a felt board activity.

 After preschool Miss B set up an icecream shop and the kids played with it for a few days. It was well worth the time spent cutting for a cheap imaginative toy!

We also had fun ice painting our letter I's. I made I i outlines in word and printed them out on a full page. I froze tempera paints a few days before in our ice cube tray and let the kids paint with them. It did not make for vibrant colors, but they all enjoyed it.

 Some of our finished products

For our snack we made icecream in a bag. This involves a lot of shaking, great for getting the wiggles out. We added flavorings, but learned that a tiny drop goes a very long way. Too much flavor over powered them and the girls did not want to eat their icecream. 

Ziploc Bag Ice Cream   You will need: For each child: 1 pint-size zip-type plastic bag
1 gallon-size zip-type plastic bag
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
6 tablespoon salt (regular table salt that pours will work)
PROCEDURE: Fill the large bag half full of ice. Add the salt. Seal the bag. Put milk, vanilla, & sugar into the small bag. Seal it. Place the small bag inside the large one & seal again carefully. Shake until mixture is ice cream, about 5 minutes. Wipe off top of small bag. Then open carefully & enjoy! Students will make ice cream in plastic bags so they can observe the process of the liquid changing to a solid.  

(recipe found at Preschool Education)

We also made these cute insect hats. It was supposed to just be a yellow band around the head, but one of my cute students insisted that she would only be a bug if it was a princess bug, so crown it was. We added pipe cleaner antennas (in the color of their choice) and circles atop them. Before adding the citcles I had the kids write an uppercase I one circle and a lowercase i on the other. 

After preschool we also attempted to build igloos with sugar cubes. We decided that it was very tricky, but my kids had fun building different structures with their cubes.