Hello and thank you in advance for your help with this matter.
My son attends Young 5's (which is not preschool and not yet fully kindergarten). Most of the children in the class are just about to turn 5 or are 5 years old.
I'm helping with their in-classroom Fall Festival celebration. The teacher has told me that I need to bring in an eatable project to do with the kids at a table. I have to buy the supplies myself. There are seventeen kids in the class.
Does anyone have any great little easy, quick project that they've seen done or have done themselves?
Greatly appreciated!
Do the old stand by - decorate sugar cookies or cupcakes. All little kids love to frost cookies or cupcakes and then dump sprinkles on them.
My mom was really into Halloween growing up. So I have a few ideas :) Hopefully they all aren't too "Halloweeny" for your festivities.
Popcorn balls...if you bring the popcorn prepared and have a microwave, it should be a fun project to do with kids. Somewhere there is a recipe to make it orange and look like a pumpkin.
Broom sticks - shred half a cheese stick for the broom. Stick a pretzel stick for the handle. Tie together with licorice.
Sandwiches - make sandwiches and then use cookie cutters to make interesting. Fall leaves, pumpkins, etc.
Ants on a log - peanut butter on celery with raisins...make a big deal about eating bugs
Rice crispie treats - add candy corn
Rice crispie pumpkins. Add orange food coloring to the marshmallows and then have the kids roll into a pumpkin. Just make sure it's cool enough to handle
candy apples
Cutout sugar cookies
Tootsie pop ghosts or spiders...for the spiders you attach pipe cleaner legs. The lollipop stick becomes the "nose" of the spider and then attach googly eyes to the lollipop
monster bites - quarter and apple. take a wedge out of each quarter and you have the mouth. Use slivered almonds to make teeth.
monster eyes - slice carrots, top with cream cheese for whites of eyes and then black olives on top of that.
ants in the sand - crushed graham crackers with chocolate sprinkles - fun to make, but a mess to eat
Witches hat cookies - fudge striped cookies with hershey kiss on top. Use frosting to make a ribbon around the hat if you want
Oreo spider - licorice legs, red hot eyes, oreo body
Bake cookies in advance (Pillsbury Sugar Cookies, pre made save A LOT of time) - then buy food coloring, powdered (confectioners) sugar, vanilla and a pint milk (you won't use much) and fall colored sprinkle.
Take 2 cups sugar add about 1/4 - 1/2 tsp of vanilla, then mix in milk 1 tablespoon at a time. Once you get a nice paint consistency add the color. You could do one large tupperware container of each color and put a little of each color on paper plates for the kids to paint with when you get to the class. You should probably pick up some painbrushes to bring as well....
If the paint gets thick you can always thin it with a DROP or 2 of milk (a little goes a long way).
Whatever you choose, remmeber have fun!
Why not play bingo using M and M's as counters. The teacher will love that they are learning their numbers and the kids will love to eat the M and M's at the end of each round. You can make the charts yourself in the shape of leaves, pumpkins, ghosts etc
Its called popcorn mash..... Or you can name it what ever. You pop popcorn in a bowl with an air pop machine than add anything you want like for instance reese peaces, mand m's, pretzels, gram crackers, anumal crackers, marshmellows, etc. than when you dish it on a plate for the kids to eat you drizzle either chocolate or carmal syrup on it for them to eat.
I was also going to suggest that you have them decorate sugar cookies that you have made ahead (I agree with buying the pre-made dough).
Other options:
Witch Sticks / Wands: Get the big pretzel rods, frosting (you can buy Halloween colors) & Halloween sprinkles. Have the kids dunk the rods into frosting & sprinkles.
Kabobs: You could buy skewers & have them do a pattern with...
1. white & colored marshmallows
2. fruit & cheese (using cut up cheese sticks)
3. colored gum drops
Dirt: Use chocolate pudding cups. Have the kids sprinkle crushed up Oeros (they can so this in plastic bags) & top with 1 - 2 gummy worms.
Pre-bake leaf-shaped cookies, but a few tubs of frosting and some fall colored/shaped sprinkles and let them frost & decorate their own cookie!
Cookies will be fun for the kids...
you can also try to do some wraps with them; the following is a recipe to make 12 serving....you can add 1/2 amt of everything to make 18
3 flour tortillas (6 inch)
4 Tbsp. PHILADELPHIA to spread (it has to be soft)
12 slices Deli Fresh Shaved Ham or Turkey Breast
12 slices of American cheese
3/4 cup shredded lettuce
To Make the wraps:
SPREAD tortillas with cream cheese; top with the cheese and the ham or turkey.
PLACE lettuce on bottom halves of tortillas; roll up.
CUT each wrap into 4 slices.
You could make leaf shaped rice krispie treats that the kids can decorate with "fall colored" icing, sprinkles, etc.
You could make cookies shaped like pumpkins, leaves, etc. and do the same decorating thing.
If it has to be healthy, what about making a mini cornucopia? You could supply different items that the kids could put inside a tortilla rolled up to look like a cornucopia.
Sorry if they aren't the best, just coming up with these off the top of my head. You could also go to familyfun.com and see what they have! Good luck!
I was also going to suggest decorating a cookie.
But how about the popcorn hand. Where you buy the plastic food glove (Or perhaps the school lunchroom could provide some) put the candy corn as the nails, fill it with popcorn, tie it off and then put a spider ring on one of the fingers.
My Aunt just made Scarecrow necklaces with her 5 year old and his friends. The turned out super cute. She made them out of candy and Raffia (it looks like straw) but you could use yarn too. So the head was a blow pop sucker, arms were jolly ranchers, legs were rolls of smarties, body was a box of Nerds and then she had googly eyes to glue on the blow pop to add a face. She just let the kids pick out all their candy for the bodies and she went around with a hot glue gun gluing all the piece to the nerd box. For the suckers she did cut the stick part off so she could just glue the sucker part to the box as well. Then she just tied the Raffia around the box and then around their necks to make a necklace. The kids loved them and had fun picking out all their candy.
Pumpkins on a stick!
get some sucker sticks (you can find them usually at michaels or meijer even, near the wilton baking stuff)
regular or jumbo size marshmallows
vanilla frosting (you can dye it orange with food coloring if you'd like)
orange crystal sugar (again...michaels...even the dollar store sometimes)
tube icing (any color)
chocolate chips
green magic marker
have them color the top of their stick green, with the marker
have them put the stick through the marshmallow until a little green pops through the top
frost the marshmallow, then sprinkle with the sugar
dot the tube icing in areas where they want to affix chocolate chips to make a jack-o-lantern face.
they came it with the HUGE marshmallows this summer....I'd use those...easier to work with because they are so big
I don't think it's right to require an "eatable" project these days. There are way too many kids with food allergies and unless you know the allergy status for every single child in the class, you run the huge risk of excluding a child.
I would ask the teacher if you can switch to a "non-eatable" project - a simple craft. Why does it need to be food related??
