Cupcake play dough counting and number recognition

Play dough is one of our favorite things to do and the kids have been asking to play with it for the last couple of day so we took it out. I added a little fun twist to it for some learning time.

Jake and Cate love to pretend play like they are cooking, so I took out the cupcake liners and cupcake pans they made pretend cupcakes.

 We added candles to the cupcakes to sing Happy Birthday. After they put the candles in their cupcakes I had them count them and match the correct number to the candles.

Since Jake knows his numbers I did a little math with him.

After we did number recognition and some simple math, the kids wanted me to light the candles to sing and they blew them out.

Was too cute!!

Playing and counting fun

This was a fun and simple way to bring learning to play. The kids loved this.

Below are some of our favorite learning games with numbers.

Apple Tree number learning

Rainbow colors and number leanring

Jelly Bean counting and color learning 

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Homemade "GLUTEN FREE" play dough

Play dough is so much fun, what kid doesn't like to play with it?  When I was making the Magic Model Clay the other day instead of wrapping it up to cool down I let a batch sit out to see if it would work as play dough. Well it did.

After it cooled down the kids played with it and had a blast. It was the softest play dough and the great thing was it was made without flour so it's "Gluten Free".

I know there are a lot of recipes out there that call for flour to make homemade play dough so I was excited when this worked and as you can see we made several YUMMY smelling batches.

You can made Model Magic the same way just after cooling under a damp towel, mold to the shape you want and let it air dry. 

Materials:

3 cups of baking soda

2 cup of corn starch

2 cups of water

Kool-aid or Duncan Hines frosting packets. (Both work the pink is bubble gum and the blue is cotton candy)

Food coloring works as well, but then you don't have a fruity smell.

Mix all the ingredients in a cooking pot, place heat on medium and stir til you have a dough. Only takes couple minutes. Kids can help but need to be supervised.

1. All the ingredients mixed together in pot
2. Thicken up
3. Looks like mash potatoes
4. Cooling
5. Playdough or Model Clay ready to play or mold

We are having fun doing Rainbow themed things to teach colors to my youngest, be sure to check out some of the fun below.

Rainbow dancing powder

Fun things to do with kool-aid

Learning color, counting and shapes

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Holiday/Christmas scented play dough

We love playing with play dough, there is so much you can do with it and it is great for fine motor skills as well.

We made our 1st batch of scented homemade Kool-aid play dough in February and my son loved it. So I couldn't wait for Christmas time to come this year cause I had so many different scents I wanted to try for fun play.

Where to get the oils:
Here is where we ordered our Wintergreen oil for the green play dough.
I got the Peppermint extract from Wal-Mart in the spice section
Warm sugar cookie and Cinnamon Nutmeg came from Wal-Mart as well from the candle section.

(If you have a little one that puts things in their mouth would not use the oils, just stick with the Peppermint extract.)


Also, remember you can use these oils for many other things like we have added them to our paint(post coming soon), Scented glitter, cloud dough play, bath paints, and so much more.



Materials:All-purpose flour....1 and 1/4 cup
Salt...1/4 cup
Scented oils or extract you would like to add
Boiling water....1 cup
cream of tarter...1 tbsp
Oil...1 and 1/2 tbsp
wax or parchment paper
large ziploc baggie....to seal play dough in

How to make:
Put all dry items in the bowl, then add water and oil in, stir with a fork 3 to 4 min or until cool, then mix with hands until blended

Place on wax or parchment paper, knead until no longer sticky, add flour as needed....we had to add flour.

Store in Ziploc or airtight container in refrigerator.

If you don't want to make homemade play dough, you can also buy the store bought and add the oils to that as well.
Making the play dough is fun and easy, your preschooler can make it, fun cooking/bonding time in the kitchen.

Below is a couple picture on some of the fun we had playing with it.

Baked the cookies now "J" is coming to serve (Loves imaginary play)

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