After looking at the mounds of cupcakes leftover from great Birthday Bash (see post for party details: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/06/birthday-bash-weekend.html), it was pretty clear what our next theme day was: Cupcake Shop Day. Anything shop or store related has been the biggest hit with all of the kids, so we turned a cupcake party into a cupcake shop.
For the second time, I set up our banquet table and step stools to be used as the baking and creating table (the first time I let the kids use it was for their Pizza Parlor, see details here: http://ashlen-kidspert.blogspot.com/2014/06/pizza-parlor-day.html). I got out muffin tins, both real and play ones, leftover cupcake wrappers, spreaders, spoons, sprinkles, and dough and let them create away.
The dough is my own recipe (flour, water, and oil--I don't use measurements so you can make it whatever consistency you'd like and then add the oil so it doesn't stick to little fingers). For their cupcakes I made both vanilla and chocolate scented dough. The dough went pretty quickly and I wound up having to through together 2 more batches throughout the day.
The frosting the kid's used to frost their "cupcakes." It's simply flour and water (made much runnier that the dough obviously) and green food coloring. I like to keep things simple and safe for the kids in case they happened to eat some of the dough and/or frosting (they didn't).
The cupcake toppings: pony beads and glitter (all bought at Dollar Tree).
I was a bit worried about the kids not playing with the cupcake dough and frosting because they can be very finicky about getting their hands messy, but they dove right in and loved it!
I thought for sure they would love creating their cupcakes, pretending to bake them, and then "sell" them in their cupcake shop, but the only thing they wanted to do was create and decorate the cupcakes which is why we went through so much dough! Even though they only decorated the dough with sprinkles, beads, glitter, and frosting, this still kept them busy ALL day long.
The clean up area--hose to clean the dirty hands (and legs, arms, feet, clothes, hair, etc.) and a towel to wipe them dry. The clean up area got quite the work out with the 7 kids!
Part way through the morning, the kids were treated to real cupcakes for a snack.
In keeping with the cupcake theme, after eating cupcakes for morning snack, the kids cut out (only the few older kids) and colored them.
Not only are the kids absolutely loving the Theme Days this summer, I feel like I'm getting spoiled by only having to plan for one activity for a day because it keeps them busy and happy all day long!
