Cooking
Pizzas are a perfect cooking activity for young kids, they don’t require to be near a hot stove and they are practically a shoe in even for picky eaters. My son has recently started picking everything except meat and cheese off his pizza so I blend carrots and peppers into the sauce, mama always wins ! Also using tortillas makes it easy to shape the crust into a heart.
Valentine’s Play-dough
Gifts
- Gather your materials. You will need a pan, oven , tortillas, pizza sauce, pepperoni , mozzarella , kitchen sheers and a heart shaped cookie cutter.
- Start by folding your tortilla in half and cutting it into a heart.
- Next using the cookie cutter make your heart shaped pepperoni, you could do this with a host of other toppings as well.
- Time to gather the kiddos! Mine was a little hungry after nap and decided to taste test the crust.
- Spread the sauce on
- Add the cheese, I am not sure if he is putting it on or taking it off in this picture. Shred much more than you need if your little chef is a fan of cheese!
- Add the pepperoni!
My son insisted the hearts were eyes, so we made a mouth too.
- Bake- I baked ours at 400* for about 10 minutes, checking on it often.
Valentine’s Play-dough
Gifts
How cute are these? What a sweet idea instead of giving cookies or candy for Valentine’s Day , give a gift that keeps on giving, home made play-dough, recipe and a heart shaped cookie cutter . I wish I had thought of it, but I didn’t, Jessica at The Entertaining House shared this with me and I am so glad she did. So if you are looking for a cute and sugar free gift check out how she did it !
The Entertaining House
Chocolate Covered
Frozen Bananas
To end our week of “Five Senses” I decided to make my son a fun and not too full of crap treat. We had theses at our friends house a few weeks ago and loved them, so thank you Mandy for the inspiration! For taste and smell ideas for preschoolers scroll down past the bananas, these two senses are tricky for really little ones so a cooking activity where you can give your child lots of chances to taste is a great option for both smell and taste!
- Gather your materials. You will need bananas, baking chocolate ( for 4 treats I used .25 lbs) , butter , popsicle sticks, wax paper, a dish and a freezer!
- Start by peeling your bananas , cutting them in half and insert the popsicle sticks.
- For every .25 pound of chocolate or chocolate chips, add 1/2 tablespoon of butter to make it easier to spread. Melt . I put it in the microwave for 20 seconds, stirred it and then another 20.
- Ooops have we been learning anything? If you want you can have your little one “taste” the bowl, ask them how it tastes, I think my son liked it!
- Spread over bananas and put them in the freezer.
- Let set
Preschool
Taste & Smell Activity
In years past I have done taste tests in my classrooms. They were always a hit and made big impressions, always a plus in a learning environment. Here is what I did:
- Make a chart- simple or big depending if you are doing this for one child or a class. On the chart list ( pictures for preschoolers, written words for school agers) 3-5 flavors of food ice cream, yogurt, and jelly bellies have all worked well for me. Make sure the flavors are simple like strawberry, lemon, vanilla etc…
- In identical cups put the food to taste.
- Have your child smell the first cup, ask them to predict the flavor- choosing from the chart’s list. Make a note of their prediction.
- Have them taste it. Ask them if they want to switch the prediction or keep it as is.
- Reveal the flavor.
- Repeat.
On paper this seems very simple but it’s fun and a fun way to learn about taste and smell as well as introducing young children to the process of a real science experiment !
Ghost Cookies
( in case you can’t tell what they are )
( in case you can’t tell what they are )
Well I tried, I failed but the important part is that I tried. While at the store I had a “Brilliant” idea for ghost cookies. You can see that the idea and the reality didn’t quite match up. I still decided to post the activity hoping to inspire some truly brilliant ideas !
- Gather your materials. You will need some sugar cookie dough, candy corn ( although black jelly bellys would have been way better) , parchment paper, white sprinkles.
- Shape your cookie dough into ghost shapes. This was my first mistake, I should have used a cookie cutter, but live and learn. If you are going to shape them remember they will spread when they cook ( oops forgot that too!).
- Add white or clear sparkly sprinkles.
- Add some candy corn for eyes- so here was my next mistake, I should have waited until the cookies were done baking , although the melted candy looks sorta spooky, so a black candy would be cool all melted.
- Bake. I had to take the blob like half baked cookies out and shape them with a spatula and although I thought they were ruined at first, they actually looked spooky all wrinkly.
So if you are going for cute- don’t use my directions , however I think I achieved a spooky ghost cookie. Wasn’t exactly my intention but they taste great!
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