Gingerbread Houses

Here is a photo tour through my favorite activity of the week--gingerbread houses!  My next favorite thing--reliving it as I look through the photos to see which I want to include in this blog post! 

Cupcakes!

Hisae, our student teacher this quarter, did a great cupcake activity with the children when we started the Bakery theme in our dramatic play corner.  After seeing these lovely pretend cupcakes at Casa Maria's Creative Learning Zone, I had to post about our activity! (I wonder if this activity could work with this homemade craft clay from Busy Bee Kids Crafts...).

I thought one of the best parts of this activity was when she brought out a huge bin, a bag of flour, and pitchers of water. The kids got to get their hands dirty to mix the simple flour and water dough mixture. This would work well with a standard salt dough, too.

Hisae set out a creative assortment of materials to decorate, including beans, confetti, sequins, colored pasta, glitter shakers, and colored wooden sticks, plus baking cups and these beautiful plastic glasses. She also had food coloring at the table for mixing the salt dough into beautiful colors.

Aromatic embellishments

One of the worse things about air travel for me is the smells.  Exhaust, body odors, the stale air that comes out of those little twisty fans above my seat.

Conversely, when things smell good, I really appreciate it. I love natural aromas. I have a very sensitive nose so that even when I water my garden, my soul is inundated with the smell of herbs.  I especially love fresh lavender in the garden.

There have been many intentional aromas added to the preschool lately (including last week's pumpkin pie paint).  I know we have a few sensitive noses in our group who might appreciate some aromatic embellishments to everyday activities.

Pumpkin Pie Playdough

Just add some pumpkin pie spice (and color) to your everyday playdough recipe.

 Br noticed that when he pressed it into the placemat, it made an imprint in the playdough.

This is the day that Stephanie learned that it is indeed okay that Za discovered using playdough in the flour sifter and in fact it creates a pretty cool outcome.

*

Almond-Scented Moon Sand

We added almond extract to this recipe from Juggling with Kids and our bakery-themed dramatic play corner smelled amazing!  We used the most random combination of flours and it worked beautifully with mineral oil.   

*

Peppermint Liquid Transfer Activity

I came across this idea on Pinterest and thought, why not make a great idea greater by adding peppermint extract and red food color? We passed this bowl around the circle when I was showing it to the children and we literally only spilled a single drop : )  And they loved the smell.