Here’s a quick and fun activity for a rainy or snowy day:
- Find several small plastic or foam balls among your child’s toys. Anything larger than a ping-pong ball and equal to or smaller than a tennis ball will do. (Tennis balls themselves are fine.)
- Take a brown paper bag or brown construction paper, and cut out several semicircles. (Although perfection isn’t necessary, cutting a quarter circle along a fold will help make your shapes more even.) The straight side of the semicircle should be slightly larger than the diameter of the ball.
- Bend the semicircle into a cone. The rounded edge should be the open end of the cone. Adjust it so the ball fits into the cone, with just a little sticking out of the top. Put a piece of tape on the edge of the cone to secure it.
Ta da! Instant ice cream shop! My son had a tremendous amount of fun with this the other day. I even lent him a real ice cream scoop so he could scoop the balls out of a bucket and place them in the cones. He was also very fond of the “ice cream truck” variation, where he drove around on his scooter handing out cones.
Yes, you can go to a toy store and buy a set of plastic ice cream cones, but why bother? Most kids shouldn’t have any trouble making the imaginative leap.