Alphabet Quiet Book: I is for Ice Cream

This post is the tenth in a series about the alphabet quiet book I'm making with the girls for preschool this year. To read the introduction, click here, and to read the rest of the posts (updated on a weekly basis) click the "Quiet Book" label on the right.

I is for Ice Cream
I could be for so many things. It could be for Igloo, or Insects, or Instruments, and those are all great and tempting ideas. But really, who can resist the deliciousness of an Ice Cream quiet book page?

Inspiration and Page Design
There are so many different and beautiful ice cream pages! I got my original inspiration from the "Big, Bigger, Biggest" ice cream cone by Lorrie as featured on the Quiet Book Blog. Sorting ice cream scoop sizes would be a great little activity for my younger preschoolers. I also liked the idea of having an ice cream bucket, like the one by Fussy Monkey Business, to store the ice cream and to "scoop" the ice cream out of before placing on the cone.

One of the prettiest ice cream pages, complete with templates so you can make your own, comes from Stephanie at Imagine Our Life. I got the idea of making clear (vinyl) jars of ice cream toppings from her, although I customized the jars with toppings I had on hand. Thus, we have a jar of "jimmies" long sprinkles, "peanuts", and "red hots" or, as Annie insists on calling them, "cherries." They're really too small to be cherries, but they can be open to different interpretations. Anyway, I'd be happy to put cinnamon red hots on my ice cream, even if they're not quite as traditional.

The only loose parts on this page are the three scoops of ice cream. They usually move straight from the velcro patches to the ice cream bucket and back, so we haven't had any close calls with losing parts from this page. I toyed with the idea of making the cherry detachable, but ended up just sewing it on. The peanut beads are also sewn to the chocolate ice cream, and the sprinkles to the vanilla.

Preschool goals for using the Ice Cream page
This is a simple page, ideal for my 2-year-old, and will probably also perfect for my 13-month-old before long. It helps them learn to sort by size in the most basic way, kind of like those rainbow doughnut stacker toys. Although this is a page geared toward the younger girls, Annie (age 4), also loves to pretend to scoop and stack the ice cream on the page. Because the next best thing to eating ice cream is to pretend to serve and eat it!

Of course, our other main goal in Ice Cream week was to eat ice cream for dessert as many nights as we could. This was a pretty great couple of weeks for the girls and me, since the next week we learned about J is for Jelly Beans. And, of course, we had to eat a lot of those too! It was for school, after all.