Ice Cream Parlour Play

Yesterday morning I asked the children what they wanted to do and Boy shouted 'Ice Cream!!!'  I explained that they would not be eating ice cream at 8.30am but that we could play ice cream parlour if they wanted.  Girl has a little ice cream set which she spent a Christmas gift card on so this seemed like a good starting point.

Some weeks ago I saw a wonderful post from Sun Hats & Wellie Boots with ice cream play dough.  This excellent post can be found here.  I had tried something similar myself at pre school some time ago and the children loved it.  So we made strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream play dough.

We made up a small amount of play dough.  1 1/2 cups plain flour, 1 1/2 cups water, 3/4 cups salt, 1 tbsp cream of tartar, 1 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil.  Place all the ingredients in a pan over a low heat and stir until a stiff dough is formed.  Knead until smooth.  Then we split it into three equal parts and added cocoa, strawberry flavouring (available at Morrisons in Home Baking section) and a few drops of red colouring, and vanilla extract and some yellow colouring to the three doughs.  Job done!

I put out some silicone cake cases to use as bowls, some plastic spoons and some shiny stars and sequins to use as sprinkles.  Girl absolutely loved this play dough and spent most of the morning making ice creams.

Her first creation was a chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.  Then she asked me for the strawberry dough.

This one with a strawberry on top!  The vanilla she enjoyed making marks in with a spoon.

Boy made a chocolate ice cream cone with some sequins on top.  He took some time over this to make sure it was perfect.

He gave it to his sister and this made her very happy as you can see!  Then he made himself an ice cream and tucked in too!

We took the dough into pre school in the afternoon and so the children there were able to enjoy it too.  We will definitely make some more to keep nice at home.  This was a great activity that both children were able to take part in.  It can sometimes be difficult to find things that they can both do and get something out of.