I is for Ice Cream, Indians, Island and Isthmus!

Letter I week was a mishmash of different I things. We began by making our own ice cream after reading the book Ice Cream written and Photographed by: William Jaspersohn. We used this recipe and it was quite tasty!

How to Make Your Own Ice Cream

* 1 tablespoon sugar
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
* 6 tablespoons rock salt (or regular salt if you can’t find rock salt)
* 1 gallon size Ziploc bag
* 1 pint size Ziploc bag
* Ice

1. Fill the gallon size bag (the larger bag) with ice about half way and add the salt and seal it.
2. Mix the sugar, milk and vanilla in the small pint sized bag and seal it.
3. Open up the large bag and put the small bag inside and seal the large bag again.
4. Shake the bag and you’ll see your mixture in the small bag turn into ice cream! (It will take about 5 minutes of shaking)
Open up the small bag and enjoy!!

We also read Ice Creams for Rosie.

For our study of Indians we began by reading the book The Legend of Ohio by Dandi Daley Mackall.



We talked about the type of home that the Indians in the story lived in and then look at this site to learn about other types of Native American Homes and then about headdresses. Then Snow White made her own Feather Headdress....flower picker was too busy playing barber shop to make one!



This week we read the My First Little House books based on the Little House books By: Laura Ingalls Wilder. The girls enjoyed them so much that we picked up one that was out last week to read this week too!



This past Wednesday, December 8th, was the feast of the Immaculate Conception and Snow White colored a cute coloring page designed by Lacy from Catholic Icing. She was very proud of the result!



Finally we studied some landforms this week, an island and its opposite form a lake and isthmus and its opposite a strait. I have some sandpaper montessori land and water form cards that I got from a Montessori Swap group for much cheaper than retail! They have sandpaper to represent the land and the smooth wood painted blue to represent the water. This picture shows the isthmus and strait and the bay and its corresponding peninsula.



We then made a land and water forms book which we will add on to as we learn the rest of the land and water forms. Her are Snow Whites island/lake and isthmus/strait. I was really happy with how they turned out.





I cut out the shapes and she colored the land or water as needed. She then wrote the name of the land/water form on the top of the page and dictated the definition (with a little help for the isthmus/strait!) and I wrote them in.

Overall I was really pleased with our school week this week. Everyone slept pretty well at night which helps me to be more productive! Next week we are planning some Jam activities for letter J, a study of Japan and some math with jewels!

Katie