12 Ice Cream Printables for Preschoolers (Love to Learn Linky #45)

I asked my kids what their favorite thing about summer is and they said ice cream! So I thought it would be fun to round up all the free ice cream learning printables for preschoolers and have them in one place for handy reference!

Practice spelling your name, one scoop at a time!

Match capital and lowercase letters with this ice cream busy bag printable.

Practice numbers and one-to-one correspondence with this math ice cream cone game.

Match pictures on the ice cream by their beginning letter sounds.

This popsicle matching activity is a perfect way to practice rhyming!

Create a yummy sight word sundae with this printable!

This ice cream file folder math game is perfect for practicing numbers 1 through 10!

And now for the packs...

Practice letter recognition, letter tracing and more in this Ice Cream ABC Pack! 

Dot markers make learning fun. Use them with these Ice Cream Do-a-Dot Printables.

This ice cream game pack has several math and letter games.

This ice cream Pre-K unit has tons of different learning activities.

Here is another ice cream preschool pack that looks great.

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

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Canada Day National Flag Windsock Craft from One Time Through

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

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Ice Cream Name Recognition with Free Printable

I'm very happy to welcome Mihaela from Best Toys 4 Toddlers! Her blog features tons of awesome activities to keep toddlers busy, learning, creating and playing. Check out her Tot Hacks series for very helpful parenting advice, as well as these free printable learning activities: Little Bo Peep Color Match, Mary Quite Contrary Roll & Build a Flower and Hickory Dickory Dock Number and Color Matching.

Ice Cream My Name

Today we are going with a Summer theme! After all, Summer is almost here! Not sure about your kids but my kids are totally crazy about ice cream! Anything related to ice cream is a total hit in our house. This is why I decided to make this printable name recognition game and give it a very cool name: Ice Cream My Name!

You will need to print out our printable ice cream. It’s only one sheet printable and it includes 6 scoops of ice cream and one cone. In case your child’s name has more than 6 letters, just print an additional sheet of the same printable. We laminated our ice cream because in this way we can use it more than once and expand the game to other words, maybe family members or sight words after our toddler learns to spell her own name.

After you have printed it out, write on a cone the complete name using a dry-erase marker. Inside the circles on the ice cream scoops write a single letter from the name. Your toddler’s task is to build her/his name using ice cream scoops to match the name written on the cone.

As I mentioned, you can use the same set to teach your toddler names of other members of your family, sight words or any other word you would like. You will simply use a paper handkerchief to wipe the dry-erase marker and write other words on the cone and letters on ice cream scoops.

Simple and effective! If you add a real ice cream into the game and treat them for a job well done, they will love it!

Click here to download your Free Ice Cream Name Printable!

Meet Mihaela:

Mihaela runs Best Toys 4 Toddlers blog and loves to come up with new ideas how to use old toys her 2 daughters keep leaving on the floor to slip over. Right now she’s thinking how to get her 7 year old to make toys for 2 year old as an idea to bring them closer together. In mean time, you can find her on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest sharing playful learning ideas for toddlers and preschoolers.

10 Fun Activities that Promote the Love of Music in Young Children

Sara from Sunshine Whispers is here today sharing why music is important and educational for toddlers and 10 ideas on how to incorporate music into your daily life. Stop by Sara's blog and check out her other awesome parenting posts, crafts and activities such as Snugglesaurus Dinosaur Craft, Toilet Paper Roll Airplane Craft, and Strong-Willed or a Spitfire?.

10 Fun Activities that Promote the Love of Music

I still remember the day I first held a violin. I was 8 years old and had ‘just decided’ I needed to play it. Now, almost 35 years later, that seemingly random decision has led to countless joys, as I have had the privilege of performing many of the great orchestral masterpieces with a number of fantastic orchestras.

Of course, most 2-year olds will not immediately fall in love with Beethoven or Miles Davis. However, there are numerous fun music activities for toddlers that can definitely set the stage for a lifetime love of music. Additionally, cultivating a love of music in young children will certainly reap rewards in other areas of development as well. Read on for my list of 10 Fun Activities that Promote the Love of Music in Young Children.

Depending on how you incorporate music activities into your child’s environment, there are a myriad of side benefits to music-themed activities (other than it just being fun!):

• Develops creativity and promotes imagination
• Helps young children learn to express themselves
• Gross motor skills development through activities that develop coordination and rhythm
• Fine motor skills development through activities that incorporate the playing of instruments
• Improves literacy and comprehension through singing songs
• Improves concentration and listening skills
• Recognizing patterns in music that will help them recognize patterns in language, math, logic, and movement
• Learning abstract concepts by providing meaningful experiences that illustrate them
• Multi-sensory learning - absorbing new information through more than one sense helps learning become permanent
• Pretend play helps develop problem solving skills
• Social interaction - music helps young children advance from parallel to cooperative play

And really, immersing yourself in music is just plain fun! Do you need ideas for how to incorporate music activities in your routine? Check out these 10 fun ideas!

1. Sing!

To borrow a phrase from a popular Sesame Street song, ‘Don’t worry if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing, sing a song.’ Sing with your kids. Don’t worry if you can’t carry a tune. Your kids won’t care. Actually, they will likely love everything about your singing voice. Start singing to your child from birth and before you know it, they will start singing with you. Sing happy songs, silly songs, sweet songs, lullabies. Sing a song with your child’s name in it. Just sing!

2. Dance

Get those wiggles out! Pop in some Raffi or Laurie Berkner. March like a dinosaur. Flap like a chicken. Fly like an airplane. Create some silly walks. Have a dance party to Mommy and Daddy’s favorite music. Be silly! Be sentimental.

3. Listen

It can be difficult to get a toddler to sit still and listen to music. That is ok. Play music in the background at dinner. Pop in a CD or playlist when you are driving (also a great time for that singing). Very quickly your child will develop favorites (our daughter loves Old MacDonald and the Manamana Song). However, expose them to your child-appropriate favorites too - 80’s pop, jazz, a little classical, maybe some Nora Jones. If you love it, your enthusiasm will rub off on them as well.

4. Play

There are so many fantastic toy instruments available. Xylophones, tambourines, rattles, maracas, bongos, kid-sized pianos, even a piano/music app on your smart phone or tablet. The point is, let you kid bang away and experiment with different types of musical instruments. If you don’t want to spend money to buy more toys… pots, pans, cups, spoon, and other household items make great play instruments as well.

5. Create

Introduce some structure to the music play. Tap a rhythm on a drum and have your kid repeat after you. Make up a verse to that song you both love to sing and ask your child to help you out with creating verses, make homemade instruments together and then play them!

6. Exposure to Instruments

I guess this one is easy for me… I play the violin. However, many community and professional orchestras will have events for kids where real instruments are available for the kids to pluck, blow, bang, and strum.

7. Exposure to Live Music

These same community and professional music groups often have young people’s concerts that are geared for kids, ages 2 to 10. Many times concerts will feature puppets, dancers, or other fun activities to keep kids engaged. You don’t have to go to an orchestra performance though. Check out live music at community fairs and festivals, marching bands, the church choir. The point is to expose your child to people performing music… trust me, they will love it!

8. Incorporate into Daily Life

You don’t have to be Julie Andrews to have fun with music in daily life. Actually, music is a great teacher. I can’t tell you how many times I have taught my daughter by singing a little song we both learned watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood (When you have to go potty, STOP!, and go right away…).

9. Build Music into Family Traditions and Special Occasions

Music is the language of emotion and our memories are primarily interpretations of how we felt about something that happened in the past. Why not build that soundtrack together? Are you going camping? Learn some silly campfire songs. Do you celebrate holidays? Turn on that holiday music station and belt out Frosty the Snowman.

10. Talk About It

Ask your child about what you are listening to, or what you are creating. Is the music loud or soft? High or low? Fast or slow? Do you like it? How does it make you feel? Get your kids to learn the language of music and that will only help cognitive and social development in other areas as well.

What kind of music do you like? Do you already incorporate music activities into your routine? I would love to hear more ideas.

Thank you for reading, and go sing a song now!

Meet Sara:

Sara blogs about kid crafts and activities, parenting, and faith at http://www.sunshinewhispers.com. She is a Christian, working (outside the home) wife, and Mom to a wild and crazy fun little girl and an adorable geriatric black lab. She works for ‘the man’ 9 to 5 and is always searching for that elusive work-life balance. Outside of work, she loves exploring the Baltimore-DC metro area with her family, hanging with friends, and just about anything that involves making her daughter smile, laugh, or dance (she dances like a chicken… it is hilarious!).

12 Ways to Learn While Playing with Food (Love to Learn Linky #42)

We all have probably told our kids at one time or another to not play with their food! Well, sometimes you can let them play and use it as a learning experience. Here are some awesome ideas for learning with common snack foods including goldfish, oreos, M&Ms, crackers and more!

How about some STEM learning with goldfish crackers? Use these free Goldfish Printables to practice math skills, and see how to engineer a Goldfish pulley system.

Read the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear and try this color matching activity with Teddy graham crackers.

Sort your lunch into different shapes with this free Shape Sorting Printable.

Have a blast cutting up your food with this Scissor Skills Lunch activity.

Got M&Ms? Practice spelling words with these free M&M Word Printables, and have fun counting with this M&M School Bus Math game (also includes free printable).

Try one of these 8 creative ways to learn with Oreos.

Learn about constellations with Fruit Gummies and this free printable.

Practice addition with these free Jellybean Math printables.

Make your own Very Hungry Caterpillar out of these healthy snack foods.

Learn to count to 100 with Skittles in this free printable basketball game.

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

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Fun Ways to Paint with Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

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• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

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Learning with Colored Straws

Hi, My name is Nicola and you can usually find me over at http://www.multicraftingmummy.com. My blog is full of ideas for arts, crafts and messy play activities for children aged 2-7 to do together. When my two sons are in school, I also like to tackle hands-on learning activities with my 3 year old daughter. Today I am delighted to be sharing a series of learning activities ideal for toddlers, using coloured straws to work on colour recognition, scooping and pouring and making basic shapes.

Straws are a very handy material to have in your learning and crafting supplies, as they can be used for so many fun activities. We put ours to good use in this Rainy Day Bubble Blowing activity recently (this project took bubble painting to a whole new level!). I have also been using a packet of coloured straws with Bella, my 3 year old daughter, in a series of learning activities.

Colour Recognition

I cut up a selection of red, yellow, blue and green straws into pieces around 4 cm long and 4 matching coloured discs of paper. I laid the coloured discs out on the table and put the pile of mixed up coloured straws in front of my toddler.

I began the activity asking her what colours the pieces of straws were that I was pointing too. She did very well with this. I then asked her to take each piece of straw and match it up to the corresponding coloured disc of paper. All the time I was talking to her and asking her questions about the colours of the straws that she was handling. I didn’t pull her up too much when she got the odd one wrong, as I didn’t want to discourage her at this stage. I gave lots of praise when she matched the straws up correctly and then gently corrected her when she got one of them mixed up.

Making Shapes

We then used the pieces of straws to make some basic shapes. We worked together on this all the while talking about the different shapes that we were creating and which were her favourites.

Pour and Scoop

I added in a plastic jug and bowl into our dish of straws for Bella to work on her scooping and pouring skills. She had great fun serving me pretend cups of tea and ice-creams. I was very full by the end of it!

Getting Messy

Bella loves to get messy and playing with shaving foam is one of her favourite messy play ingredients. To incorporate her love of getting messy with a fine motor skills activity we used the coloured straws again but this time added in shaving foam and gold coins. Unfortunately she quickly abandoned the tweezers and just got stuck in with her hands, but that’s doing activities with toddlers for you!

More activity ideas for rainbow straws:

-Help your child to make their name with them.
-Work on colour sequencing making different patterns with them.
-Create some art work with them.

What other ideas can you add?

If you enjoyed this post you might like to pop over and read Sensory Soup and Fine Motor Fishing.

Meet Nicola:
Nicola enjoyed a successful career as a Librarian in the media and legal sectors before settling down to life as a stay at home mum to Liam 7, Freddie 5 and Bella 3. They live by the sea in Ireland and enjoy doing arts and crafts, almost as part of their daily routines. You can follow her on her blog, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram.

5 Skills to Teach Your Tot that Will Lead to Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension skills can easily make children soar as wonderful independent readers or a lack of can leave them frustrated, confused, and upset. Adding a few simple techniques to your toddler’s story time can give him a great foundation of reading comprehension skills even before he is an independent reader. Try some of these easy techniques to make the most out of story time with your tot.

1. Make Predictions

Before reading a story with your tot, take a picture walk through the book. Look at the pictures together and describe what it looks like is happening. Ask questions like, “How do you think this character feels? What do you think is making him sad?” This will help your child to look for details in the pictures while you read the story and it will help him make predictions about what is going to happen. While reading the story, stop before turning the page occasionally to ask, “What do you think will happen next?” This will help to build his internal dialog of how to make predictions while reading.

2. Make Connections

Connections can be made before, during or after a story is read. Help your child to see similarities between events or characters in the story and in her own life. Maybe a character has a dog like your kiddo, maybe they both like pizza. After reading a story, you might find yourself in a similar situation as a story you read. Take this learning opportunity to bring up the story and remember what happened to the characters. Connecting a story to a tot’s life brings the story to life for her and really helps her to understand it better.

3. Ask Questions

Asking your tot questions, even if he might not be able to answer them yet will help to build his internal dialog that will help him to understand stories for many years to come. Try asking questions before, during, and after reading a story. Here are some questions you might ask.

Before Reading
What do you think this story will be about?
Why do you think the character is doing or feeling like this?
How do you think they will solve the problem?

During Reading
What do you think will happen next?
What would you do if this happened?
Why did the character do that?
What started this argument?

After Reading
What did this story remind you of?
How could the characters have acted in a better way?
Why do you think the story ended like that?
What was your favorite part?
Who was your favorite character?

4. Think Out Loud

Thinking out loud while reading with your tot will teach her how to respond to a story, to monitor her own understanding and to clarify confusions when she becomes an independent reader. Your example will help to shape her internal dialog or self talk as she reads.

Thinking out loud is really just as simple as it sounds. If you get to a point in the story where you don’t understand something, say what you are thinking. It might sound like, “Why did they go to the store again? Let me look at that last page once more. Oh yeah, they forgot to get sugar while they were talking to their friends.” This simple technique will help your child to become very skilled at monitoring her own understanding when she is reading on her own.

5. Act It Out

Acting stories out adds a greatly needed element of play to reading with toddlers. It also helps to bring stories to life. Tots love to engage in make-believe play and will soon be independently incorporating stories into make-believe play.

You may also use dress –up clothes, figurines, toys, and puppets to help children act out stories from books. Let your kiddo choose what seems most interesting and introduce him to new ways to act stories out over time.

Interested in learning more about developing your child’s language and literacy skills? Click here to get the FREE guide: 5 Early Literacy Toys that will SKYROCKET Your Child’s Language Skills.

Meet Lindsay:

Lindsay Drewes is a former 4th and 5th grade teacher and current stay-at home-mom and Momprenuer of Kiddo Korner. Lindsay holds both a bachelor's and master's degree in education. As founder of KiddoKorner.com, Lindsay followed her passion of mothering to research and offer the best educational, Eco-friendly and innovative products made for babies and toddlers.

Free Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles (Love to Learn Linky #40)

Puzzles are a great hands-on way for kids to learn. They are a favorite at our house! My daughters love the challenge of solving puzzles and putting pieces together to create a picture. With Spring here I thought it would be fun to practice our alphabet and letter cases using this set of colorful, free printable Butterfly Puzzles.

This set includes 26 different butterflies with an uppercase letter and lowercase letter on each wing.

Since all the butterflies are unique, it is a great way for kids to check their own work to make sure the butterflies and letters match up. Great for independent and quiet time!

Click here to download your Free Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles!

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Spring Activities for Toddlers & Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect
Inspiring Kids to Protect Our Oceans: Oil Spill Activity from One Time Through

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

• Upload your direct post link to the InLinkz widget. Link up to 3 posts.

• Like the hosts on Facebook: Totschooling, A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain and One Time Through.

• Or follow the hosts on Pinterest: A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain, Totschooling and One Time Through.

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12 Creative Ways to Learn with Coloring Pages (Love to Learn Linky #37)

Coloring pages seem like the perfect quiet time or busy activity for kids. However, my daughters (and I'm sure my kids aren't the only ones) will spend about 5 minutes or less if I give them a coloring page and crayons. Granted, this may be because they are still young (3 1/2 and almost 2 yrs), but I wanted to find a way to engage my kids and also get some educational value out of a simple coloring page. 

Recently, we went on a vacation which involved an airplane flight as well as multiple car rides. While I thought I had packed enough activities, I ended up running out of things to keep them busy. I went out and bought some coloring books and decided to get creative!

Here are 12 ideas for creative ways of using and learning with coloring pages, as well as a list of my favorite free coloring page resources at the end!

1. Color By Number
This is a super easy way to turn a coloring page into an educational activity! Just create a legend of numbers and their corresponding colors, and write the numbers on the picture where the colors go. For a fun twist, you can play a roll & color game by rolling a die, calling out the number and then coloring one of the numbers in the picture. Keep rolling and playing until the picture is complete.

2. Color by Letter or Sight Word
This is the same idea as number 1 but you can use letters, words, shapes or anything else that your child is learning.

3. Color by Dots
Use a marker to create little circles, essentially labeling which colors go where on the page. Great for color recognition in young children.

4. Color by Sequence 
Write numbers or letters throughout the picture and ask your child to color in numerical or alphabetical order. 

5. Sticker by Number/Letter/Word
This one is a favorite at our house! Hide letters, numbers or words throughout the picture and also write them on a set of stickers (I like to purchase these circle labeling stickers at the dollar store). The child then places the stickers over the correct letter or number.

6. Cut & Make into a Puzzle
This one is really easy to prep. Just cut the paper into 4, 6, 9 or 12 pieces and let your child put it back together. You can also let the child do the cutting and it doubles as cutting practice!

7. Cut in Half and Complete Picture
Learn about symmetry or just let your child use their imagination to complete the picture.

8. Find & Color
Depending on the type of coloring page, ask your child to find a specific shape, object or character and once they find it they color it. Repeat until the whole page is colored. This would be great with a more complex coloring page with many different elements.

9. Make a Collage
We do this one a lot at our house. I give my kids craft supplies such as tissue paper, pom poms, feathers, googly eyes, scrap paper, buttons, etc and have them glue these things onto the coloring page. It usually comes out like a work of art! You may need to reinforce the paper or, if you are printing, you can print on cardstock or heavy paper. 

10. Turn into a Playdough Mat
Any coloring page can be turned into a playdough mat. Just laminate the sheet (or not) and give your child playdough to "color" in the picture. Tons of fun and great for fine motor skills.

11. Turn into a Lacing Card
This one works best if the coloring page is mainly one animal, object or character. Laminate the page (or print on cardstock), then cut out the main object and punch holes around it. Give your child a shoelace, string, yarn etc. to lace around the picture.

12. Cut out Characters/Animals/Objects and Make Story Puppets
Another idea that works only for certain coloring pages. Cut out the main characters, animals, etc. and turn them into puppets by taping a craft stick to the back. Ask your child to come up with a story and use the puppets to act it out.

Free Coloring Pages & Resources:

300+ Disney Princess Coloring Pages by What Mommy Does
35 Free Disney's Frozen Coloring Pages by The Kid's Coloring Pages
1000+ Free Disney Coloring Pages for Kids by The Farm Girl Gabs
Famous Paintings Coloring Pages by Super Coloring
Marvel Superhero Squad Coloring Pages by On Coloring
Robots Coloring Pages by The Art & Craft Giraffe
32 Free Zoo Animal Coloring Pages by Raising Our Kids
Animal Coloring Pages by Better Homes & Gardens
Eric Carle Coloring Pages by Mom Junction


LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Dinosaur Crafts & Activities for Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect
DIY Cardboard Rocket Ship and Space Play Ideas from One Time Through
Play Dough Robots from Left Brain Craft Brain

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

• Upload your direct post link to the InLinkz widget. Link up to 3 posts.

• Like the hosts on Facebook: Totschooling, A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain and One Time Through.

• Or follow the hosts on Pinterest: A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain, Totschooling and One Time Through.

• Post our button on your site.

• By linking up, you agree to have your images shared with credit.

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Orange Tree Counting Activity with Free Printable

The next wonderful guest blogger in our series is Tarana from Sand In My Toes. Tarana is mommy to a toddler, writing about parenthood, activities and crafts for preschoolers. Some of my favorite posts of hers are Alphabet Matching Activity (with free printable), Hidden Letters Painting and Pasta Counting Activity. She is here today sharing a fun counting activity with orange trees!

Counting is one of those skills which gets better with practice. Toddlers can start counting pretty early if they are interested, and we have been doing counting activities since my son was two (he’s three now).

The reinforcing is important too, so counting is something preschoolers and kindergartners should practice routinely.

The only thing is that they tend to get bored with numbers at that age (or pretty much anything!), so I’m always looking for new ways to make counting interesting.

We loved doing this Orange Tree Counting Activity. Kids love anything bright and colourful, so this is a great activity to get them interested in numbers! And there’s a free printable too (link below), so you can set it up pretty easily.

The printable has tree cards from 1 to 20, but I only used the cards from 1 to 6 when we did the activity.

I cut out circles from orange craft paper to make the ‘oranges’, but you could use stickers, play dough, pom poms, or even finger paint!

I set out the cards randomly and placed the right number of oranges needed for completing them.

We first read the number on the card out loud and then glued on the oranges in the correct quantity. You don’t need to glue them on if you plan to use the cards again. You can even laminate the cards to make them last longer.

It didn’t take too long for us to complete the activity, and we’ll soon do it with the bigger numbers. Hope you have fun doing this too!

Click here to Download the Free Printable Orange Tree Counting Activity!

Tarana Khan is mom to a toddler, living an expat life. She loves writing and has done her stints as a copywriter, reporter and content editor, before embracing parenthood full time. She blogs at Sand In My Toes, where you can drop by to read more of her parenting and other adventures! Tarana also has a series called Busy Hands where you can find more activities and crafts for toddlers and preschoolers. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Google+.