Play Dough Ice Cream Play

We've enjoyed some gorgeous weather here recently, & when the sun shines nothing quite beats an ice cream! :) Minnie loves it, so I thought an ice cream stand (with the pretend variety) would make a perfect role play area for her.


We made up a batch of playdough, & once cooled we split it into four & added food colouring to create the different flavours. Minnie asked for strawberry, chocolate, & mint, & I added vanilla. For the chocolate ice cream we rolled the playdough in cocoa powder & kneaded it into the dough. For the vanilla ice cream we simply added vanilla essence & no food colouring.  We added mint essence to the green dough & strawberry to the pink coloured dough, & placed in four recycled shallow trays, perfect for mini ice cream containers.


To make the ice cream cones we used some recycled corrugated cardboard that I'd saved from a previous craft. 


We simply stuck the card triangles together to make our ice cream cones.


To make the ice cream toppings we used coloured beads, mini foil shapes in a shaker, & small sticks from our garden made great chocolate flakes!


Our Ice Cream Stand was ready to go! We set up a table outside with a gingham cloth, a few different sized scoops, napkins, a cash till, money & Minnie was ready to serve her hungry customers!

Exploring size & shape with the different scoops
 
Minnie discovered the scoops made great patterns in the playdough  too


Adding a few sprinkles & a pea!

Minnie had a little mix & added some glitter!!

Minnie added food bags to her play area so she could wrap the ice creams up before handing them out - genius!
Yummmm! Comparing size... which one to go for ?

You can never have enough ice cream! ;-)

An umbrella just adds that finishing touch! 

The ice cream stand has been great for encouraging sensory exploration, maths, imaginary play, language, creativity & colour recognition/mixing.

We've kept the ice cream stand up in the corner of our kitchen as a mini play area (which we can easily take outside too), & simply wrap the playdough in an airtight bag ready for play the next day.

Check out our easy peasy homemade strawberry ice cream -  a real summer treat! :-)