Ice Cream Art Activity

Yanthy made popsicle art last Monday as part of their activity with his Occupational Therapist (OT), Teacher Erl.  His OT said that he was so quiet and focused during the activity that at some point she asked him if he liked their activity.  He said yes and he proved it to be true when he said that he wanted to make two popsicles instead of one.  He said that the other popsicle is for his baby brother, Mateo.  How sweet!  After their session, he gladly and eagerly showed me his art project.  He used it right away in his pretend play.

Popsicles made by Yanthy for himself and his baby brother.

This gave me inspiration to do a similar art activity.  Yesterday, we made ice cream art.

Some of the things I like with this simple art activity are the following:

1. It allowed us to use materials we already have in the house like scrap colored papers that we have used before but are still big enough to be used in our new art project.
2. It allowed my son to practice his fine motor skills as he traced circles on the colored papers, drew a triangle as ice cream cone, cut the different shapes, spread the glue and wrote names and words on his art work.
3. It helped my son practice being focused on a task until its completion.
4. It's another activity that demonstrated he is capable of working on something long enough as long as he is interested in it.  It showed he is capable of long attention span that is much longer than what is expected for children his age.
5. It's an activity that makes him sit still for a while and allows him to take a break from active play which he also likes to do all day.
6. It's so simple to do and yet it provides a nice bonding activity for me and my son.

Here's what we did step by step:

1. I asked Yanthy to trace some one peso coins on red colored paper for our cherry.
2. I helped him trace bigger circles on pink and lavender papers for our strawberry and ube ice cream.
3. Then I asked him to draw triangles for the ice cream cones.
4. Next, I asked him to cut the circles while I watched him.  He's still having a hard time cutting curves that's why I like this activity because he gets to practice that skill.



Cutting circles.

5. After cutting the circles, I asked him to cut the triangles.
6. Then, I first showed him how to arrange our cut outs to form ice creams.
7. After that, I asked him to spread some glue on the cut outs and paste the cut outs on the bond paper.
8. Next, I asked him to write names for his ice creams. As usual, one ice cream is for him and the other one is for his brother.  Actually, he wanted to make more ice cream cones.  He wanted to make enough for everyone in our household including our helper.  But I told him that we need to buy new colored paper because we've used up our supply.
9. Then I also asked him to spell ice cream and write it down on our art work.  One thing I like about our art works like this one is that writing becomes fun for him when it is integrated to an art activity.  He is still struggling in writing the alphabet but his therapist says that children his age (3 years old) actually are only expected to draw lines or crosses.  They are not yet expected to write letters and numbers or their names. Anyway, Yanthy likes to write his name or words related to his art so I seized the opportunity to let him practice his handwriting.  He wrote all the words including his name and that of his baby brother on his own, no hand assistance from me anymore.  But I gave him some coaching or verbal assistance on how to write the letter M and R.  We also erased some of his lines when they become so big and not proportioned to the other letters he already wrote.  I'm happy that he persevered and remained committed to finish writing the words we wanted to write on his art work.  It showed again that he can be committed to something he really wanted to do even at this young age.
10. Lastly, as with his other art works/projects, we displayed it by hanging it on our living room wall.  This gives him a lot of pride and confidence.  It encourages him to keep on doing more art projects that we can display in our house.

Now serving!  Ready to party with our ice cream cones!