India Topic Craft # 5 - Guess The Indian Ice Cream Game

The boys made Indian Ice Cream in flavours you can't get at your

local ice cream parlour.

This was a lot of fun at supper.

Inspiration for this activity came from this book:

"Come And Eat With Us (Discovery Flaps)" by Annie Kubler and Caroline Formby

There is a page illustrating a girl buying ice-cream in an Indian village

from an ice-cream stall and it has pictures of the flavours on it.

We decided to make all those ice-cream flavours that vendor sells.

Big Seed keeps telling me he would like to try guava ice cream every time we read it.

So these are the flavours:

Guava, coconut, pineapple, ginger, banana.

This is the simplest ice-cream recipe ever!

1. Prepare fruits:

Pineapple: get a handful of chunks and blend them in a liquidizer/blender

Coconut: 3 tablespoons of  dessicated coconut 

Ginger : Finely grate 1 inch of ginger

Banana : Chop 1 banana into chunks and press through a fine sieve

Guava : Liquidize half of it

(Can you believe we couldn't buy guava after all this! We used strawberries instead...not very Indian

but I had to think fast. Use mango otherwise.)

2. Prepare creamy bit.

Whisk 3 egg yolks with 3 oz of light sugar in a bowl.

Take 500ml of double cream, boil then cool.

As it cools but it is still warm, add it gradually to the egg mixture a little at a time,

stirring constantly. It must not be too hot or it will cook the eggs and your ice cream will taste like breakfast!

3. Mix and freeze

Mix 100ml of cream with each of the ingredients, put in plastic pot and freeze.

We used old yoghurt pots.

The banana, ginger and coconut won't go hard as they don't contain water.

The others do so you need to stir it a few times..every hour or so.

In 3 hours it's frozen ready to eat.

4. Play Game

As the boys helped to make it, we played guess the flavour.

They have only ever eaten vanilla, strawberry or chocolate.

The ginger one was a real gorgeous surprise!

Enjoy!

x

I hope you have enjoyed our Indian series.

Why not try something for Independence Day on the 15th August for fun?

India Topic Craft # 4 - Hot Watercolours

Still keeping with our India Unit , we used the books we had and

focussed on Hot Colours.

I asked Big Seed to choose the watercolours that were hot.

With those we did some wet-on-wet painting with watercolours and a pipette.

This is Little Seed's attempt. He couldn't get the hang of the pipette

and kept banging it on the paper, then I gave him a brush.

We will do this with hot pastels next.

The options are endless.

Big seed wanted to continue with a paintbrush...free rein.

Check out this link for fantastic drip art using the Indian Flag as inspiration.

Looks great fun!

Check out the other posts in this unit at the side bar

x

India Topic Craft # 3 - Glamorous Indian Trucks

 Continuing our theme, we decorated our own Indian Trucks.

They are amazingly decorated, they look fantastic.

We used some old trucks from our collection at home and recycled them 

for this unique activity.

As an alternative children could decorate a print-out.

We took inspiration from these photos their grandfather took over in India.

Don't they look fabulous?

There are lots more pictures on the internet for inspiration.

We used permanent markers, stickers, sequins and glitter glue.

When else will he get a chance to colour on metal?

Little Seed's tractor.

Indian Independence Day is August 15th...use it as an excuse to do something different!

X

India Topic Craft # 2 - Making Indian Sweets

Who doesn't like Indian sweets?

They are gorgeous and so aromatically spiced.

A true feel of India and so easy to make.

Mango Halwa

I chose this recipe as mangoes are common in the supermarkets here at the moment 

and I am able to adjust the sugar content to suit our family.

Make sure the mangoes are really ripe and sweet, especially if you throw in chucks at the end.

Here is the link to the recipe

It uses semolina, sugar , butter and mangoes.

There are 3 mangoes in this recipe so it's quite healthy as sweets go!

The website has lots of inspiring recipes and photos if the mood takes you.

x

Have you seen our Indian bags and activities?

India Topic Craft # 1 - Decorating Cloth Shopping Bags

Following on from our India activities here
the boys have made some gorgeous cloth shopping bags

like the people in India use everyday.

They have been using them for years before they became "trendy" and "eco-friendly" at home.

We were inspired by this cream fabric cloth bag from India,

some red printed fabric at the top of the picture,

and "Mama's Sari's" by Pooja Makhijani

which has amazing bright illustrations to inspire art.

Little Seed used fabric crayons and dipped his fingers in fabric paint.

Big Seed tried to imitate the tiny dots on the fabric by using fabric pens

and a cookie cutter as a circular template.

This is his circular design.

Little seed got creative by using the crayon as a brush 

with the paint.

Big Seed used some wooden blocks to print,

fingerprints, handprints inspired by the common "paisley" design

which was created by using the side of the hand.

We will be using them on our next shopping trip!


Plain cloth bags bought from here

x

India Topic Activities

I have created Montessori themed activities for a new geography

theme on India. I see that in many Montessori circles it gets studied under the theme of Asia

but we are going to focus solely on India.

Their Grandfather comes from India so we are lucky to have some treats.

Here is what is on our shelves:

They brought back some natural finds; leaves, dried flowers, cotton buds, giant seed pods,

and peacock feathers, and a wooden Ganesh figure.

( You can buy real feathers on Ebay and also buy Ganesh figures online).

I place a large magnifying glass next to the Discovery Tray.

We also have a little basket full of Indian jewellery I had in my drawers for years
which I didn't photograph but is a small Discovery Basket .

This is a traditional spice tray.

I filled it with rainbow rice.

Transferring raw lentils from child beakers for Little Seed.

Transferring raw lentils from 2 stainless steel cups for Big Seed.

(These have invisible bells inside..how cute.)

Any stainless steel cups will do, they are very common in most homes.

Transferring yellow beads pretending to be chick peas.

The ones I had were too big but these beads fit perfectly.

Using lemon slice tongs and soap holder with suction pads.

Animal dominoes that have monkeys and tigers somewhere in the set.

Lovely books from Amazon and Ebay all secondhand.

"Celebration" and "Children Just Like Me" by Dorling Kindersley can be used for all geography topics.

"Playtime (Around The World) by Kate Petty and Oxfam

"Prita Goes To India" by Prodeepta Das

"I Is For India" by Prodeepta Das

"Come And Eat With Us (Discovery Flaps)" by Annie Kubler and Caroline Formby

Puzzles; one for each of the boys

3D Peacock Puzzle from here

Construct a peacock feather game.
The felt cut-outs I made are in a pot.
He has to layer the pieces and make them all the same.

Play basket:
My green felt playmat, bits of tree bark blocks,
wooden mushrooms for forest, green playsilk,
toy elephants, a wooden carved elephant from India,
bit of green octagon construction pieces, cardboard trees we had made,
and...

a family of tigers.

Putting things together makes play more inviting sometimes.

Felt aeroplanes and and ice cube tray.
1 to 1 correspondence for Little Seed

A selection of wooden toys brought back from India.
You can get little metal bells anywhere and I have seen some of these on "Ethnic style" stalls in markets locally.

A wooden Indian kitchen playset for making chappatis.
You can improvise and use yellow playdoh too.

To take this recent activity further:
Big Seed has to thread as many aeroplane buttons on the pipecleaners as he can using
the sand timer.
He then writes down the number he managed to thread.

I made these elephant number cards to order numbers 1 - 20.
Download a copy here.

Our map of India that decorated the play area.

There are many links to elephant themed activities and worksheets that you can find on the internet.

In the next post I will be showing you what crafty activities we have done
linking to our India topic.

My Craft links:
Craft activity # 1 : Shopping bags
Craft activity # 2 : Making Indian Sweets
Craft activity # 3 : Glamorous Indian Trucks
Craft activity # 4 : Hot Watercolours
Craft activity # 5 : Guess the Indian Ice Cream Game
x

Linking to:











No Time For Flashcards - Link and Learn