Not So Usual Celebrations
July 18th is National Ice Cream Day. What a terrific day! What’s not to like about ice cream? Certainly if you’re allergic to dairy, this doesn’t seem like such a great day, but for most of us, ice cream is truly a treat. Actually, for some, July is Ice Cream Month which would give you 31 days of ice cream treats (perhaps this is where 31 flavors—Baskin Robbins got their name.) It was in 1984 that then President Ronal Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream Month and he also established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in July. Another fact about ice cream that you may not know is that the ice cream cone was invented on 1904 on July 23 at the St. Louis World Fair. This is disputed by a patent filed in New York months before the World’s Fair began—either way, 1904 seems to be the year of invention. Either way, those of us who enjoy ice cream cones are delighted to credit either or both of these dates.
Activities for Kids
Two engaging activities come to mind for National Ice Cream Day. The first would be a taste test to see if kids can taste a difference between Baskin and Robbins, Haagen Dazs, Nestlees, Ben and Jerry’s, the store brand and so on. Have kids take the taste test and proclaim the winner the best ice cream.
A second project could be to make homemade ice cream. Each student can do this in either cans or better yet, two plastic baggies. The larger baggie holds the ice (salted of course so it will be colder), and the internal baggie holds the ice cream mix (you can get a recipe on line that uses milk, sugar, vanilla, and eggs). Once you pour some of the mixture into the smaller Ziploc baggie, you place it inside the larger baggie, filling it with ice. Then the youth acts like an external dasher, rolling the contents of the baggies around and around until the ingredients start to harden into ice cream.
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