Play dough cakes (cooks)

On Wednesday afternoons we have swimming at 3 and because Little Miss is not 2 yet I have to get into the water with her. It is way too hard to try and get us both dried and dressed in the swimming change rooms (Little Miss either shivers while I get dressed or I shiver while I get her dressed not to mention the whole wet floor thing!!!) so I have gotten into the habit of bundling us into the car after swimming and racing home to jump in a hot shower. As a result, we are in our pyjamas by 4pm on a wednesday afternoon so this means "quiet" play inside.

Last weekend I made some play dough finding the recipe at the Imagination Tree (www.theimaginationtree.com). If you haven't visited there yet make sure you do. They have zillions of amazing play ideas for babies. toddlers and preschoolers. Anyway, getting off the topic!! Little Miss has been loving her new play dough (and Mummy is more relaxed in case Little Miss takes a lick!!!) and one of her new words lately is "cook" - which means cake! So our obvious "quiet" play activity last Wednesday was making PLAYDOUGH CAKES.

I started Little Miss off by moulding the play dough into 3 flat balls and placing them on plates. Little Miss then had a lovely time adding beads as candles...

Luckily she wasn't so busy thay she couldn't give Mummy a big "cheese"!

After a while, we ran out of "bead candles" and Little Miss was saying "more, more, more" so Mummy was brave and got out the real birthday candles...

And one more happy "cheese" for a fun afternoon of "cooks"!!!

This activity is good for:

•  Fine motor skills (pushing candles into the play dough)
• Language development (talking about the cakes and the candles and eating. We even sang Happy Birthday a few times!!)
• Pretend play
• Independent play (once I set her up Little Miss was happy for a long time by herself - ocassionally bringing me one to taste!)

Have a great week. Would love to hear about other play dough ideas for toddlers....

Common Sense Mummy xxx