We've enjoyed some gorgeous weather here recently, & when the sun shines nothing quite beats an ice cream! :) Minnie loves it, so I thought an ice cream stand (with the pretend variety) would make a perfect role play area for her.
We made up a batch of
playdough, & once cooled we split it into four & added food colouring to create the different flavours. Minnie asked for strawberry, chocolate, & mint, & I added vanilla. For the chocolate ice cream we rolled the playdough in cocoa powder & kneaded it into the dough. For the vanilla ice cream we simply added vanilla essence & no food colouring. We added mint essence to the green dough & strawberry to the pink coloured dough, & placed in four recycled shallow trays, perfect for mini ice cream containers.
To make the ice cream cones we used some recycled corrugated cardboard that I'd saved from a previous craft.
We simply stuck the card triangles together to make our ice cream cones.
To make the ice cream toppings we used coloured beads, mini foil shapes in a shaker, & small sticks from our garden made great chocolate flakes!
Our Ice Cream Stand was ready to go! We set up a table outside with a gingham cloth, a few different sized scoops, napkins, a cash till, money & Minnie was ready to serve her hungry customers!
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| Exploring size & shape with the different scoops |
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| Minnie discovered the scoops made great patterns in the playdough too |
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| Adding a few sprinkles & a pea! |
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| Minnie had a little mix & added some glitter!! |
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| Minnie added food bags to her play area so she could wrap the ice creams up before handing them out - genius! |
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| Yummmm! Comparing size... which one to go for ? |
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| You can never have enough ice cream! ;-) |
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| An umbrella just adds that finishing touch! |
The ice cream stand has been great for encouraging sensory exploration, maths, imaginary play, language, creativity & colour recognition/mixing.
We've kept the ice cream stand up in the corner of our kitchen as a mini play area (which we can easily take outside too), & simply wrap the playdough in an airtight bag ready for play the next day.
