Ice Cream Cone Craft for Summer

Summer is the perfect time to discuss all the dairy products you eat and enjoy. Your children may even want to say “thank you” to the cows for all the good dairy foods we eat, including ice cream. What child (and adults) doesn't love ice cream?  As part of this seasonal celebration make this simple cut and paste craft with your family. Build an ice cream cone along with the toppings for a cool and refreshing craft.

Materials:

• Heavy-duty paper or card stock
• Construction paper
• Safety scissors
• Pencil
• Brown marker
• Glue
• Candy sprinkles
• Sliced nuts

Directions:

Step 1 – Prepare your work surface for cutting and pasting with this project. Newspaper on the tabletop and on the floor will work well to catch drips and excess candy sprinkles. Clean up will be a breeze if you prepare ahead of time.

Step 2 – Draw a cone shape on light brown construction paper. It’s a triangle shape. If you don’t have the paper, try using a piece of a paper grocery bag. Set this aside.

Step 3 – Next, invite your child to choose the colors for the ice cream scoops. Talk about the different flavors of ice cream and the colors they possess. Draw semi-circle shapes and cut at least two scoops. You may want a triple decker-cone with three scoops.

Step 4 – With all the shapes drawn and cut out, start building your ice cream cone. Begin by gluing the cone shape at the bottom of your background sheet of heavy-duty construction paper or card stock.

Step 5 – Next, glue on each ice cream scoop, having the bottom the largest and each additional scoop just a tad smaller.

Step 6 – Take a brown marker and draw criss-cross lines across the triangle so it looks like a real waffle-type ice cream cone.

Step 7 – Now comes the fun part. – it’s time to glue on the candy sprinkles and sliced nuts. Let your child choose among what you have in the kitchen pantry to decorate their ice cream. Spread on glue and shake the sprinkles on top. Once it dries, you can shake off the excess in the garbage can or onto a sheet of newspaper that can be discarded.

Praise your child for his efforts on making this yummy ice cream cone craft for summer fun. Make this a teachable moment by discussing all the other dairy products you use in your home. And why not create an edible ice cream delight to enjoy with your child today? So cool and yummy!

Happy Parenting,

Tania :)

Photo courtesy of Tania Cowling, all rights reserved

Recycle and Make New Crayons

Are you wondering what to do with all those broken and worn-out crayons from past school years? Create a new crayon from all those old ones as a fun weekend craft. This is a great recycling lesson and art project all in one. Crayon cookies provide a rainbow effect in this new art medium. The kids can make swirls and designs with one swoop across the paper. This is a great activity to do on a rainy day or when it’s just too hot to play outdoors. Here are the simple instructions.

Materials You Need:

Old crayons

Muffin tin

Aluminum foil

Oven

White paper

Instructions to Make Crayon Muffins:

Step 1 - Invite the children to remove all the paper wrappings from each crayon. It’s best to use all the brightly colored crayons you have.

Step 2 - Line several cups of a muffin tin with squares of aluminum foil. Make sure the foil covers the entire muffin cup and overlaps along the top edge. The foil makes it mess-proof to the muffin tray and easy to take out after the melting process.

Step 3 - Have the kids break the crayons into pieces between one-half inch to an inch.

Step 4 - Fill the muffin cup half-way with an assortment of crayon pieces in a variety of colors. Continue with this process according to how many crayon cookies you want to make.

Step 5 - Place the baking tin in a preheated 300-degree oven. Bake the crayons for about five to seven minutes. Ovens vary so watch the melting process carefully. Melt them just enough to blend the colors but not to a total liquid where the colors turn into a muddy mess.

Step 6 - Carefully remove the muffin tin from the oven and set it to cool for at least 30 minutes. Personally, once the liquid started to solidify, I transferred the tin to the refrigerator to finish the task.

Step 7 - When the crayon muffins are completely cool and solid, the children can carefully peel off the aluminum foil. Note that the cookies are more colorful on the foil side.

Step 8 - Now, bring out the paper and challenge the kids to make designs and rainbows with their new art medium.