Bee (18 months), JJ (3 years and 10 months) and I (young at heart) all enjoyed drawing on a few of the eggs using edible food markers. (Tip from a non-pro: next time I’ll use a section of an egg carton as the stand for Bee’s egg – we almost lost one of our egg cups.)
I also made edible paint using tiny amounts of food colouring and white vinegar, which JJ and I applied using cotton tips. (I wasn’t quite brave enough to let Bee join in for this part). As you can see, I’d figured out that china egg cups weren’t the ideal stand by this point and cut up the egg cartoon to make less fragile versions.
JJ really enjoyed both aspects of this activity. She spent a lot of time on each egg, really focusing on applying the different colours in just the right spots to achieve the look she was after.
And of course, after we’d decorated them, we then got to peel and eat them! Eggs are fantastic for growing bodies, with all their vitamins and essential minerals. And peeling eggs is really tricky for little fingers. It takes JJ about 10 minutes to peel an egg as she does little bit by little bit, which is great fine motor practise.
Edible low sugar play dough for toddler and preschooler sensory play.
This post comes with a warning to your waistline, because what I am about to show you is disturbingly delicious.
It’s edible.
It’s low sugar.
It’s got only three ingredients.
And it’s called either playdough, play dough or play-doh. (Lol – I can never work it out…)
Most of the edible play dough recipes that I found on the internet called for copious amounts of powdered sugar; more than what I was comfortable with. So I came up with this modified recipe.
1 Cup instant milk powder
1 Cup smooth peanut butter
1 Tbsp honey
Or actually double that as I made two batches, one for each child. These quantities are approxiate – adjust until the dough looks and feels about right. I also included small amounts of sprinkles, pearls, choc chips, stars for decorations. (I figured the sugar in these was worth the “bang for buck”).
Despite how it looks at first glance, I’m still going to call this recipe healthy-ish. There are no artificial colours or flavours (including in the sprinkles – as I chose brands that don’t contain these additives). The dough is high in protein, fat and calcium (all of which are great for my skinny and still growing kids), and only contains marginal sugar from the peanut butter. You could easily reduce the sugar content further by choosing a no added sugar peanut butter (and of course, by omitting the sprinkly ‘decorations’).
And how did it taste? To be honest, I was expecting it to taste only so-so. But I was wrong. It tastes a bit like peanut butter fudge. Totally more-ish. Nom nom nom.
But at the end of the day, this is a playdough recipe, not a dessert. It’s designed to be mixed, moulded and squished. It’s designed to be tasted, but not eaten by the bowlful. (Note to self to remember that last point next time).
And the best bit is that the kids can make it from scratch themselves. Measuring out quantities is excellent early maths practise and mixing it all together is all part of the sensory experience.
This is the first time that my toddler Bee (then 16 months old) has been involved in making play dough in the kitchen. She loved it! She stood in her shabby chic wooden high chair with her very own bowl. She spent a long time just touching, mixing, poking, squishing and tasting. After a while she gravitated to the novelty toothpicks and stuck them in to make a little echidna.
Meanwhile, JJ (my then 3 year and 8 month old preschooler) and I had fun making an ice cream, a Daddy, a Mummy, playing with some of our cookie cutters and sneaking a taste every now and again.
I bought all of the accessory items e from either our local grocery store or discount shop. The cute lion, zebra and butterfly cookie cutters that we used as stampers above are from this set of animal cookie cutters and this Easter cookie cutter set (both affiliate links*).
Lots of fun for everyone!
For more squishy sensory play, here are some of our other ideas. (Click on the image to go through to the full post).
These, and other fun ideas are all over on our Play Ideas page.
And are you following us on Pinterest? We pin lots of great ideas over there as well.
*An affiliate link means I may earn a referral fee or commission if you make a purchase through my link, without any extra cost to you. Fees like this helps to keep this little blog afloat. Thanks for your support.
Super easy bread dough that kids can make, from just two ingredients! Fun sensory dough to play and eat.
Who said you can’t have your sensory dough and eat it too?
This is an easy and healthy recipe for bread dough that kids enjoy making, playing with, baking and eating. And it’s made from two basic ingredients that you probably already have in your pantry.
Yes, just two! Told you it was easy…
To make an easy bread dough all you need is:
1 cup of self-raising flour
2/3 cup of Greek yogurt
(If you don’t have self raising flour, then you can make your own version by adding 1 teaspoon of baking powder to 1 cup of plain flour. You could also substitute natural yogurt instead of Greek yogurt if you prefer.)
Getting the kids to help measure out the quantities is fantastic meaningful maths practice, incorporating counting, measuring, number recognition and volume concepts.
Then it’s time to get their hands busy! Mixing, squashing, squishing, kneading, moulding, squeezing, pulling, pushing, rolling, pinching, patting, flattening. A great work out for the tiny fine motor muscles in their fingers and hands. And it’s such delightfully messy, sticky, gooey play.
(Having dough covered hands is sensory overload for some kids. You might get asked to wash hands mid-play like we did. Once their hands are clean, they’ll probably be ready to get them messy all over again.)
This bread dough can be baked just like this, but we thought it would be fun to add a few decorations and extend the play. We used fruit nuggets, sultanas, chia seeds, banana chips and blueberries, along with our cookie cutter stash and some silicon cupcake moulds.
There was lots of discussions about what to make, and how to decorate it. The gingerbread cookie cutters were popular, with sultanas being used for eyes, blueberries for buttons and chia seeds for hair. The cupcake moulds were also hit, with abstract designs on top. A few of the decorations bypassed the dough and were popped straight into hungry mouths.
This is an open-ended activity where kids can choose how elaborately they would like to decorate their bread, which makes it suitable for a range of ages. We had 3, 4 and 8 year olds all playing happily together. Edible doughs are a good idea for babies and toddlers too who may be still in the mouthing phase.
When their creations are ready, just pop into a moderate 180 degrees Celsius (356 degrees Fahrenheit) until they are brown. Here’s a before and after photo, where you can see that not only does the colour change, but the bread rises slightly in the oven too.
Afterwards, there’s that special kind of silence which means everyone is enjoying their snack. #nomnom
We’ve made this bread dough lots of times (especially when I have yogurt in the fridge that is nearing expiry). It’s a great for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea – any time really. There’s no artificial colours, flavours, preservatives (and if you leave out the nuggets, there’s also no added sugar). It’s also egg-free and nut-free, which is great for our friends and family members who have egg and nut allergies.
The recipe is based on Dairy Australia’s Easy Yogurt Dough. Usually we make it with wholemeal (whole wheat) flour, adding that extra bit of fibre and flavour. Either way, they are best eaten warm straight from the oven, perhaps with a little bit of butter.
Here’s some we made in a caterpillar shape. Seems we’re on a caterpillar roll lately… Boom tish!
I’ll be linking this up as part of Lemon Lime Adventure’s 12 Months of Sensory Dough challenge. Pop over for lots more edible dough inspiration! I’ll also be bringing you an edible peanut butter dough recipe shortly, so stay tuned…
Check out some of our other sensory dough posts:
(click on the picture to see the full post).
These, and other fun ideas are all over on our Play Ideas page.
Are you on Pinterest? See what we’re pinning here:
And while I have you, I’d also like to take the opportunity to announce the winner of our Peppa Pig – The Big Splash competition for Life’s Little Treasures Foundation, where I asked ‘What gigantic cartoon person would you (or your kids) most like to meet and why?’
Congratulations Theresa, you won with your comment “Zoe would love to meet a life size Care Bear. She’s into all the vintage characters which are making a come back recently such as Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony. Luckily I held on to some of my original toys. Your girls must have loved meeting Peppa! They are growing so fast!”
Congrats again Theresa, please check your inbox (or spam folder) for a message from me.
JJ and I made strawberry and grape fruit skewers for morning tea today. I’ve blogged about making fruit skewers before, and it’s a fun activity we do together quite often. Somehow fruit on sticks is so much more fun!
And there’s also a bit of sneaky learning going on at the same time. She’s learning about fruit, their names, colours, textures. And she’s learning about basic food preparation.
She’s learning to be careful of the pointy end of the skewer.
She’s developing fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and mental concentration – all of which are precursors to writing.
I asked her how many strawberries she chose and how many grapes, which is great counting practice.
And she’s also learning about patterns. I tended to make skewers where the fruit were evenly distributed (strawberry, grape, strawberry, grape, etc), whereas JJ chose to use mostly grapes and only one strawberry. I didn’t instruct her – I just pointed out how we were making different choices, and both ways are correct.
And so she’s learning how to make choices, in situations where there is no wrong answer. This helps to develop her self-confidence.
Happy Australia Day folks! The day we celebrate living in this wonderful part of the world…
In the Banya household, it’s also known as Hottest 100 Day. Woot!!
We’ll be kicking back with a few of these,
NOT what we’ll be drinking
That’s much more likely…
listening to the Js, and wondering why we don’t know that many of the songs this year. This will be the first year that I’ve been in Australia for Australia Day, and not voted in the Hottest 100. Sadly our car stereo plays CDs of the Playschool, Beatrice Potter and Bindi Eye Bop style more often than Triple J lately. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy listening to some “new” music today nonetheless!
If you are in the mood for baking today, here’s a little Aussie favourite that you might like to whip up. This is my (slightly healthier) version of traditional Anzac biscuits – they are easy to make with your toddler too.
Wholemeal Anzac Biscuits
1 cup traditional rolled oats
1 cup plain wholemeal flour
1 cup desiccated coconut
3/4 cup of caster sugar
125g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tablespoon boiling water
1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees.
2. Combine oats, flour sugar and coconut in a large bowl.
3. Combine bicarbonate of soda and boiling water
4. Heat butter and golden syrup in a small saucepan over low heat until melted, then add the bicarbonate of soda and water mixture. The combination will foam. Add to the dry ingredients and stir until all combined.
5. If your toddler lets you, put small balls onto a baking tray (with baking paper), and flatten slightly. Allow enough space for the biscuits to spread. Or if your toddler insists, just pile it on and make a slice instead. 🙂
6. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Loosen biscuits (or cut slice) while still warm.
“Helping” in the kitchen
Note a teeny Bee watching in the background 🙂
Ready to go in the oven
Out of the oven, all golden brown
And cut up into slices
And in the biscuit tin
Yum! Then eat them all. And convince yourself that it’s not that bad cause at least they are high fibre. 🙂
You had just gotten used to telling people that you were two years and five months, and now I’m trying to tell you that you are two and a “half” and you don’t really get this half business. I made you a shirt with “2 1/2” on it, and show you the half, and you correct me saying “No, It’s a one Mummy, and here’s a two, and there’s another two”.
Your language skills are improving. I hardly need to translate now as strangers can now understand you more and more. You’re not really asking “Why?” yet, but you have started asking questions that you know the answer to. Such as “what that one called?”, whilst pointing to a funnel or whatever. At first I was answering, but now I ask you if you know, and most of the time you can answer yourself.
Of course, being two, you are constantly saying “No I do it, I do it. I can do it all by myself. Look, I did it. I did it. I did it all by myself, alone.”
One of my favourite things that you’ve said this month was your dad asked, “what’s for morning tea?” You said “Honey-doo meyon skews Daddy. What was you hoping for?” I think the answer was standing right in front of him.
We started and stopped toilet training this month. You were very keen on wearing your undies, but not so keen on sitting on the toilet or potty. You will go, but it takes a lot of cajoling to get you on there, and you never initiate it. Naturally accidents happen, and you’ve been getting a bit upset about them lately, so we’ve got you back in nappies and we’ll try again soon.
You’ve also started to drop your day nap, and have missed it most days this week. Previously if you missed a sleep it would be disastrous, but now you seem to be able to cope quite well, keeping chirpy through the afternoon. We still try to sleep every day, but if it doesn’t happen, them I explain instead that it is “quiet time”, and we play upstairs with your dress ups or read books etc for a few hours. It does mean that Mummy loses her mid-afternoon down time though 🙁
We’ve introduced a new TV show “Charlie & Lola”. You also seem to need to role-play at the moment, and would be involved in some sort of role-playing play constantly. You often want to role-play the story of a book or a TV show over and over again. So with Charlie and Lola being a big influence this month, this has flowed over into your roleplaying games. “Daddy, I Lola. You Charlie”, is heard at least a dozen times a day.
You’ve been showing a desire to learn letters ever since you saw the episode “Too Many Big Words”. You can already recognise J & A, and the numbers 1, 2 & 3. You start pointing them out on number plates, in books, etc. A few months ago you would clam up if I tried to brought up learning letters, I think you were embarrassed that you didn’t know them. But now that you’ve seen that Lola struggled with this too, you seem happy to learn, indeed requesting to learn.
You continue to rely heavily on your dummy and rubbing my belly button as comforters. This had increased significantly around the time Bee was born, but I was expecting it to have ebbed by now. Your obsession with my belly button has morphed from wanting to touch it with your hands to wanting to touch it with your feet. I’m doing my best to quash this, but you are as stubborn as only a 2.5 year old can be. It feels like such an invasion of my personal space, but I keep telling myself “this too will pass”.
Behaviourally, you’ve been running away a lot this month. Whether at the park or the shopping centre, you get this idea in your head, and you turn and bolt for hundreds of metres in the other direction. If you turn around and see me following, you get upset, so clearly you are trying to lose me. And then when you do get out of my sight, you hide. It’s embarrassing, frustrating and very dangerous. I see other mothers thinking “Why can’t you control your child?”, (or maybe that’s just my mothers guilt imagining them judging me). Either way, I’ve had to stop going anywhere uncontained. We now only go to parks and play centres with fences. And we drive instead of walk there. Or we just stay home. It’s the only way I can cope and keep you safe until this phase passes.
Threading is quite a complicated skill for toddlers and preschoolers. It develops their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination and mental concentration, all of which are precursors to writing. And learning to thread is fun! Especially if you combine it with morning tea.
1. Honeydew Melon Skewers
Here’s my 2.5 year old JJ learning how to thread onto a bamboo skewer. She found it easiest to anchor the pointy end of the skewer to the bench or plate, and push the honeydew melon onto the blunt end.
She did all of these herself quite easily.
When she’d finished, I asked her to call Mr Banya down for morning tea. JJ called out “Daddy, morning tea is READY. Honey-doo mey-on skews Daddy. What were you hoping for?”
2. Cheerio Necklace
We’ve also tried threading Cheerios onto twine. First I tie a Cheerio onto one end to act as a anchor, then let her thread away. This is a big jump in skill level. It really requires you to use both hands together. JJ can poke the twine through a Cheerio easily enough, but then it gets trickier when you have to swap hands in order to pull the Cheerio down the length of twine.
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JJ spent ages but only got about half a dozen threaded. So we called this a victory and then I did the rest for her (in about 20 seconds because my own threading skills totally rock!) so that she could wear and eat the necklace as a snack. This task is right at her skill level at the moment, so I have a feeling we’ll be doing this every second day until she masters it, or until she shows signs of boredom or frustration.
(Cheerios have too much sugar for my liking, but I’ve not found had a chance to go searching for a healthier alternative. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know?)
3. Strawberry & Blueberry Fruit Necklace
A further extension is a fruit necklace. For this I tied a blunt wool needle to some twine, and tied a blueberry to the other end as an anchor. What makes this task more challenging, is needing to maintain a somewhat gentle grip on the fruit as you thread. JJ squished quite a few blueberries as she couldn’t concentrate on both things at once. I ended up making most of the necklace, whilst JJ watched (and ate up the supplies!)
As you can see, these were lots of fun to wear! And bonus that I got to tick this off my To-Do list. Although her top needed a good soak afterwards. 🙂
In our house, “popcorn” can mean one of three things:
1) Natures Earth butter popcorn (less salty than other brands I’ve tried)
2) homemade popcorn with garlic butter (made in the microwave using a brown paper bag)
3) a combination of Abundant Earth wholegrain cereals – puffed corn, puffed brown rice, puffed millet & puffed kamut – that I’ve mixed together in a cereal storage container.
All of these three versions of ‘popcorn’ are common snacks around our place. But it’s the third type that I’ve used in this recipe.
A few days ago when JJ was getting up to mischief, I decided a spot of toddler cooking would be a helpful distraction. I remembered eating chocolate crackles as a child (many moons ago), and figured I could come up with an easy and healthier version.
Ingredients
80g milk chocolate
50g butter
2 Tbsp golden syrup
60g of dry ‘popcorn’ (mixed puffed corn, puffed brown rice, puffed kamut & puffed millet)
10g of Kellogg’s All-Bran
Method
Melt chocolate, butter and golden syrup together in the microwave. Pour over all the cereals. Mix. Spoon into mini cupcake patty pans. Refrigerate until set.
Easy! So easy you can do it with your toddler on the spur of the moment. But please overlook the state of my kitchen, I didn’t have a chance to pretty things up before I happy snapped.
Verdict: These were so quick and fun to make, and sweet enough without being overly sugary. I love that they include a wider range of wholegrains in JJ’s diet than just wheat. And bonus that they are egg-free, so would be a good party option for our friend with egg allergies. This is a make-again recipe for sure.
Easter’s fast approaching, and in our house that means decorating eggs. Last year we dyed boiled eggs by dipped them in food colouring solution. This year we decided to draw and paint them instead.
I bought all of the accessory items e from either our local grocery store or discount shop. The cute lion, zebra and butterfly cookie cutters that we used as stampers above are from this 
and this 
(both affiliate links*).
There was lots of discussions about what to make, and how to decorate it. The gingerbread cookie cutters were popular, with sultanas being used for eyes, blueberries for buttons and chia seeds for hair. The cupcake moulds were also hit, with abstract designs on top. A few of the decorations bypassed the dough and were popped straight into hungry mouths.
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