Snakes?
Cars?
Spooky houses?
Sure! Sounds fun!
What about to eat? huh? oh, no!!!!
Have a conversation with your group about frosting, candy, plastic knives, etc. are your tools for the activity and they are not to lick their fingers or knives while assembling your food creation. As one who did food experiences exactly like these with 3s, 4s, and 5s and also as a certified grades 6-12 FACS/home economics teacher with 9 years experience teaching culinary arts, please make sure to find ways to involve each child and have all supplies available and near the work area before beginning. Those little ones will be bouncing up and down in their chairs!!! They will be so excited!
These photos are not from my experiences with preschool but have been gleaned from the internet and look more professionally done than what finished food crafting with little ones will look like. Don't fret, however. In their eyes, they've helped create a masterpiece and they will also just as quickly will want to eat and destroy it.
That's half the fun, I think. The other half is the playful learning and building of skills that will be occurring. Fine motor skills will be strengthened when using plastic knives to frost or cut and when placing candy or cookie particles in different places. Safety concepts and skills will be reinforced when setting up and proceeding through the food crafting experience. Make sure to state real world science safety and observation skills connections while children are working. While eating, take time to question the children about sizes of different food pieces that were used for more math skills besides any measuring or counting while assembling.
Isn't this snake almost too cute to eat?!?!?! My four-year-olds did a snake or caterpillar looking creation using Twinkies for sections with green-tinted vanilla frosting to cover the outsides of each Twinkie. So each child got to unwrap one, frost it, and place it on the display tray.
Way back when working with three-year-olds for a pre-Father's Day activity, we crafted a car using a purchased pound cake for our base with a little bit of carving out, a blue-frosted graham cracker became the front windshield, and we also had chocolate-covered mini doughnuts for tires. Our car's exterior was red-tinted frosting. And I think we had black string licorice pieces to resemble wipers for our front windshield!
This is a yummy chocolate-y haunted house! Working with a group of 3 1/2 year olds, our spooky dilapidated house was made with a purchased pound cake, Swiss Cake Rolls or Ho-Hos for corner type rounded towers, crumbled Shredded Wheat cereal for dried grass, malted milk balls served as decorative stone pieces to top the corner towers, and a chocolate frosted sugar wafer cookies for the front door.
Remember with this type of food crafting of desserts, frosting is the "glue" to hold all your bits and pieces together...well, at least long enough hopefully to snap a picture and hear the oohs and ahs from the children!!!
Another tip is don't be a perfectionist when food crafting with early childhood learners. This is a playful learning opportunity for them to build fine motor, math, and science skills.
