Summer Treats: Sensory play, crafts, and read-alouds

We've done math, cooking, and imaginative play--what's left?  Sensory play, crafts, and chapter books!  Whenever we are doing a theme week, I like to have chapter books that I can read aloud to the kids.  Sometimes we do this outside, but this particular week it was hot so we stayed inside.  We read a Boxcar Children book (I loved these as a kid!). The Ice Cream Mystery was perfect for this week and the kids loved it!  When I saw this fine motor skills craft idea on the blog A Dab of Glue Will Do, I knew it would be perfect for an activity at read-aloud time during our Sweet Treats week.  Both kids really loved it.  Ava enjoyed creating a pattern on hers while Wyatt just liked sticking down the tissue paper.  And they were so impressed with their final product.  Even better was that I already had all of the supplies on hand!

Kinetic sand really is amazing.  We don't bring it out every day but when we do, the kids will literally sit and be entertained by it for a few hours.  I thought it would be another good activity for them during read-aloud time.  I made a basket with some ice cream themed items, plus our sweet treats erasers, and put it out with their kinetic sand bins.  We store their sand in these Sterilite Clip Boxes.
When they're done we just put the lids on and store them away in the cabinet until the next time.  My kids love hiding things in the sand and then hunting to find it, so the little erasers were a big hit for that.  They also made sand sundaes and scooped extra large ice cream cones.  The mess was minimal, and again, I had everything on hand already.

We're finishing up the last few chapters of our book and I think we'll do that from beach towels on the living room floor.  Maybe their pretend play ice cream truck will make an appearance to help cool us all off.  :)