Monthly Archives: April 2010

Why Didn’t I Think of That? Pencil Topper Stamps









Try again?  over and over and over

Letter of the Day Activities (I day!)

We focused on “I for Ice” today and included some science in our lessons!

Ice Painting: This was how I introduced the letter I to him.  It was a hit. I gave J a piece of paper with both the upper and lower case letter I and we talked about the letter, it’s sound, and then let the LeapFrog fridge phonics toy repeat the letter and sound. We also filled in the block letters with stickers.

 Since “ice” was our I-word for the day, I gave him some homemade popsicles (made from Kool-aid) and showed him how he could paint with them.  I got this idea from the Toddler Busy Book.  Surprisingly, he was so interested in painting that he did not consider eating the popsicles until the very end.  (During this activity, he pointed out that the paper was wet, so I started our science lesson by telling him as the ice gets warm it melts and becomes water)   **You could also use plain ice and construction paper to paint similar to this.

Ice Melting Bags:  This was our science activity that went well with I for Ice day.  I had already made several different colored ice cubes the night before using food coloring.  I had J separate the different colors into sandwich bags and we taped them to the dishwasher so they would be at his eye level.  We described the ice together (cold, hard, heart-shaped in our case).  I opened the freezer door and had him feel inside.  He noticed that it was cold in the freezer.  I told him that ice needed to be kept cold or it would melt, so we kept it in the freezer.  I asked him if he remembered what happens to ice when it gets warm and he did!!  He replied “water!”  By this point our ice bags had already begun to melt, so I had him look for water in the bags.   He was excited to find some in a couple of the bags!  Throughout the afternoon, we kept an eye on our ice bags.  I pointed out that the ice was getting smaller and the water in the bag was increasing.  We talked about the different properties of ice and water.  By dinnertime, he was excited to show daddy his bags (of now colored water) and to tell him that the ice had become water because they got warm.  I got the general idea from

You could easily turn this into a color mixing activity or get more specific by placing more ice in one bag and noticing how it melts slower this way, discuss why,… 

Ice Blocks - This was a simple activity with really no prep and no clean up.  I gave J a bowl of ice cubes and he built with them…. kind of.  At first we made letters and shapes with them (of course we made the letter I) but as they melted a bit, we could start stacking them to create walls/towers. 

Other things we did:

  • I pulled out all of J’s letter books and had him search for the letter I page.  He then wanted to show his stuffed Pooh all of the letter I’s.
  • I had printed an extra Letter I page (they were big block letters) and I had him fill in the letters with blocks, pompoms, stickers, and paperclips.\
  • It’s raining AGAIN, so I used painter’s tape to write both the upper and lower case letter I on our kitchen floor.  (I reused last weeks triangle tape because painter’s tape can get expensive!!)  Our letter I will stay up all week.
  • He got a popsicle as a special snack (probably his favorite “activity” of the day.  He was VERY engaged while eating his popsicle!

Age attempted: 23 months