National Ice Cream Day = Easy Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

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Did you know that July 15 is National Ice Cream Day? I read it in Parents Magazine. (Apparently it is also Cow Appreciation Day and Tapioca Pudding Day, but I won't be celebrating those. Source) National Ice Cream Day apparently came about thanks to President Ronald Reagan who also named July National Ice Cream Month and picked the third Sunday of the month to be National Ice Cream Day. Many of the ice cream retailers will have specials including some free ice cream. Check yours locally.

To celebrate we made an easy homemade strawberry ice cream. I know I saw this somewhere and cannot find where it was. So if it was your blog, please let me know so I can link to it. Since I could not find my original source I went and googled it and found it at All Recipes. 

You take a package of frozen strawberries, 1/2 cup of sugar and 2/3 cup of heavy cream. 

Put them in your food processor and process. That is it. Then enjoy!!

We certainly did!

We also enjoyed a few books about ice cream.

The Full Scoop by Gail Gibbons is a great book that explains how ice cream is made and some history of it. It is the only one I found that actually was not just about factory made ice cream.

And of course, Curious George and the Ice Cream Surprise is always a favorite! 












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Sharing Saturday #28

Wow, we had some amazing posts shared last week. If you haven't seen all of them, please go visit and leave some comment love. 

Since there was a five-way tie for most clicked, I'm just going to feature a few of my favorites!

A Few of My Favorites:

From PlayDrMom: Promoting Positive Behavior

From Play Through the Day: Raising a Reading Superstar

From Little Wonders' Days: Bouncing Bubbles

From Familyicious: Different Playdates (I am featuring 3 of her posts since I thought they all went together!)

 Water & Ice                             Mud                                       Kid Wash

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From Your Host:

Fireflies Part 1

  Now for This Week's Party  
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Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. 

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All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Fireflies Part 1

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Summertime always reminds me of fireflies. I have fond memories of catching fireflies in jars and using them as a nightlight in our pop-up camper at sleepover parties. Of course when I woke up early the next morning I was very afraid of the ugly bug in the jar. We use to have sleepovers in our camper in our backyard in the summer. 

 I wanted to share this with Hazel.  Since she does not stay up when it is dark we read some books and did some crafts.

We took some books out of the library. First is Fireflies! by Julie Brinckloe. This is a great story of a child going out with the neighborhood kids to catch fireflies and realizing as the light changes color that the firefly needs to be free.

Next is Living Lights: Fireflies in Your Backyard by Nancy Loewen. This book gives interesting facts about fireflies and their general life cycle including what they eat, how they are born, etc.

The third book is Go, Critter, Go! Flash, Firefly, Flash! by Dana Meachen Rau. This is another  book about fireflies and is written for the very young. 

Another great book is The Little Squeegy Bug by Bill Martin, Jr. We did not take this book out this time, but have in the past. We love this book. It is a story of how the firefly got its light.





Next we went and got some glow in the dark fluorescent yellow paint. We started by painting dots on black paper. Or should I say I did. Hazel had other ideas.
 

My painting

Hazel's painting

Next we tried to paint fireflies on the black paper using the yellow for just the tail.

My Painting

Hazel's Painting

 Stay tune to see more firefly projects!


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