Have you ever thought of making an ice cream ant? This is a great way to teach your children about insects.
I started by scooping out three vanilla ice cream scoops for the three parts of the body: head, thorax, and abdomen. The children stabbed in six pretzel sticks for legs, all coming out of the thorax, of course. Two more pretzels were poked into the head for antennae. (You had to almost hold on to the ice cream to jab those pretzels in!) I quickly poured a chocolate magic hardening shell on top, for the exoskeleton. I was originally going to use almond bark, which I’ve discovered, is great for making frozen chocolate bananas. But when I tried it, the chocolate ice cream ant looked like a giant had stepped on it! It was a mess. It was probably due to the boiling hot chocolate being poured on ice cream.
My husband said there was an easier way, and off he went to the grocery store. He found the magic shell stuff around the place where you find Hershey’s syrup. I wish I had memorized the name of the thing, but it has the word “magic” in it, and “hardens” was another key word. It might have been Smuckers.
Anyway, since there are six people in our family, we made two ants, and each person ate an ant segment. All my kids fought over the thorax, for some odd reason, maybe because they wanted to get more pretzels. It was a fun project. If you decide to do this project with your kids, just remember not to use almond bark, or you’ll get a big gooey mess. I’ve included a photo so that you can point and laugh.
Tags: Homeschooling, ice cream, insects, science
Great idea! I did this with my kids several years ago. It was so much fun. Who can say science class is dull when you are using ice cream and playing with your food. We used the chocolate syrup that forms a hard shell on your ice cream to give a visual aid for the exoskeleton.
Kids love science when they can eat it.
Great idea, kids will love this, & can even get in some summer learning at same time! Yeah
And it includes chocolate, which is a plus. 🙂
Now this is quite a novel idea! Can’t say I’ve heard of it before — mostly we are into banana splits as far as being creative with ice cream goes. It’s a good exercise to to teach the kids about parts of insects too. 🙂
It was my kids’ favorite insect activity!