Apples Archives – Danya Banya

Fruit Mummies

Danya Banya August 3, 2016 1

Fruit mummies! A fun and healthy snack for Halloween (or a Spooky Sixth birthday party).

Oops, I’m a bit behind in bringing you details of my daughter JJ’s 6th birthday party. She chose a “Spooky, Scary, Sixth Birthday” party theme, which is a little unusual for a May party, but who says you can’t have Halloween twice a year? Fun!

One of the items we served was this bowl of cute Fruit Mummies.

They were quite easy to make (see below). I especially loved that they could be made a few days ahead of the party, so it doesn’t add to the last minute prep panic. In fact, these photos were taken calmly a few days before the party, (so I didn’t have to worry about trying to grab a last minute shot while the party guests were arriving!)

I also love that our fruit mummies provide a healthy snack option that everyone could eat, including party guests with various food allergies. (We had friends coming who were allergic to eggs, dairy, nuts, gluten, food colouring, deadly nightshades and more…)

And afterwards, anything that wasn’t eaten wasn’t wasted. We just put the left over mummified fruit into our regular fruit bowl to eat the next day.

How to make fruit mummies

Fruit
White streamers
Googly eyes
Non-toxic, clear-drying glue
Sticky tape
Scissors

Cut the steamers into strips about 40cm (15in) long. Our streamers were quite wide, so I also our strips in half lengthwise, which doubled the number of strips.

Wrap a strip around a piece of fruit, securing with stickytape. Glue a pair of googly eyes on to the opposite side as the tape.

Tip: If you are using fruit where the skin will be removed (like a banana or mandarin), then you can also glue the googly eyes to the skin of the fruit, so that it looks like the eyes are peeping out through the bandages.

Tip 2: You don’t have to use the same sized googly eyes. Mismatched googly eyes can add to the spooky look.

JJ helped me make a couple. I made the rest, simply because we had a party worth to do! But they are easy enough that preschoolers and up could make them (especially if you use fruit like bananas, mandarins or oranges where it doesn’t matter if a tiny bit of glue gets onto the skin.)

I’ll be bringing you more ideas from JJ’s birthday party shortly, but in the meantime, you might also like the Spooky Oranges that we made a few years ago. Or you can check out our Halloween page for more ghoulish ideas.

I’ve also added our Halloween pinterest board below for more inspiration…

xx Danya

Categories Food, Halloween Tags Apples, Healthy

Apple craft idea {with wriggly worm!}

Danya Banya October 20, 2014 3

Here’s a cute little worm-in-an-apple craft idea. The kids and I made these wormy apples for Bee’s toddler exercise class when ‘apple’ was their word-of-the-week. Of course, Bee’s big sister wanted to make an apple too, so we ended up with both a toddler and a preschooler version. My favourite bit is the cut out section where their finger becomes the worm!

Worm in An Apple Craft

I drew an apple outline onto recycled cardboard, and invited the kids to paint. Initially I suggested either green (for granny smith apples), pink (for pink lady apples) or red (for red delicious, and all the other red apples out there), but Bee chose pink and purple, and JJ chose blue with a black leaf. As we had just finished reading Eric Carle’s The Artist Who Painted A Blue Horse the night before, I quietly applauded their colour choices.

Bee (then almost 2 years old), had a lot of fun splodging in pink and purple with a paint brush. JJ (4 years old) started painting hers, and then very politely asked if I could finish it off so that the paint would go all the way to the lines. (She hasn’t really been worried about keeping within the lines before, so I wonder if this is going to be her new focus?) Afterwards I cut two rough holes in the cardboard with scissors.

The kids loved poking a finger worm through the apple holes. It’s just like those interactive finger puppet books, except that you get to make up this story.

And then, guess what happened?

JJ helped herself to an apple! Which was not very surprising really, considering my kids go through 2 tonne of fruit a day. (Almost).

If you’re after more apple ideas, you might also like our apple scented play dough – so easy to make!

xx Danya

Categories Art & Crafts For Kids, Preschoolers, Toddlers Tags Apples, Recycled or Upcycled

Apple Scented Play Dough

Danya Banya April 13, 2014 14

One day, in the middle of the summer holidays, my daughter JJ said “I’m bored”.

“Bah!” I said. “Let’s do something fun then!”

“Can we make another type of play dough, Mummy?” JJ asked.

You see, JJ (at 3 years & 7 months old) has caught on that there’s a whole host of different play dough recipe variations that you can make at home, and each one is cooler than the next. She’s keen to try them all! So far we’ve already made foam dough, cloud dough ‘sand’, two versions of edible play dough (this one and this one), and rose-scented play dough (my favourite).

But I was kinda put on short notice here. Normally I try to pre-plan so I can gather ingredients, but this time the kids wanted a new play dough pronto, so I had to think about what ingredients we had on hand. I remembered seeing play dough made from hair conditioner back when JJ was first born. I can’t remember the particular blogger to credit this idea to (as I didn’t have Pinterest to keep track of great ideas back then!) but suffice to say I’ve been meaning to give this one a try for a long time…

And low and behold, we had some apple scented conditioner up in the bathroom, and a box of corn flour in the cupboard, so that’s how we came to experiment with making Apple Scented Play Dough using these ingredients as the base. (Depending on where you live, what I call corn flour, you might call corn starch instead).

Making Apple Scented Play Dough

JJ helped make our new play dough. We didn’t measure out quantities – we just kept adding conditioner to corn flour, until the mixture felt dough-like. There were lots of exaggerated sniffs and comments about how soft it feels and how delicious it smells. Then I added red food colouring to one half of the dough, and green and yellow food colouring to the other half, and quickly shaped them into apples, adding some twigs, a leaf and real apples for dramatic effect, lol.

JJ, being a blogger’s daughter, knows all about waiting to play until after a couple of photos are (quickly) taken, bless her patient little cotton socks!

Once she got the all clear, she pulled out her play dough box, spread out all her cutters and rollers across the couch and started to play. (Usually she would use the table for this sort of thing, but I think she was so keen to play that she used the first surface she came across!)

Bee (1 year & 4 months old) joined in the sensory play. Together they squished, moulded, rolled, cut, shaped, and kneaded to their hearts content, and I didn’t hear another “I’m bored” for the rest of the day.

So, if you’ve read this far, you’re probably wanting to know if I recommend making this play dough at home?

Advantages:

the ingredients are cheap and easy to get. (You might already have them in your cupboard).
the dough was easy enough for a preschooler to make, and making it adds to the sensory experience.
the smell is lovely! And you can vary the scent to another fruit just by buying a different scented conditioner.
it feels really soft, both while making it and while playing with it.
it holds it’s shape much better than foam dough, making it feel more like ‘real’ play dough, and you still retain the ability to make it crumble if you want to.

Disadvantages:

this play dough is a lot messier than our usual ‘proper’ play dough recipe, as it can crumble all over the floor, and leaves a film of fine corn flour on everything it touches. For people who are scared of mess, you might want to play with this dough outside.
it’s not edible, so you’d have to be careful around young toddlers who might be still in the mouthing phase.
we didn’t keep ours for more than a couple of days, so I’m not sure how long it would last.
whilst the kids enjoyed smelling and describing the scent when prompted, they didn’t seem to interact with the scent during their free play.

In summary: this playdough smelt lovely and was fun to play with. Whilst it was a bit messy, it was totally worth it to try it this once, just for that novel factor of trying out something new. But we’ll probably try other variations before we make this again.

If you’re looking for more apple ideas, we also have a cute apple craft, with a wriggly worm!

Or if it’s more sensory play ideas you’re after, you can find all our ideas on our Messy & Sensory Play.

You can also follow my Messy & Sensory Play Pinterest board to see all the sensory play ideas I like from across the web. Don’t forget to follow our Danya Banya blog Pinterest board too, while you’re there!

Will you be making a new play dough with your kids these holidays? Go on, they’ll love it!

xx Danya

Categories Play Ideas, Popular, Preschoolers, Sensory Play, Toddlers Tags Apples