Birthday cake pretend play

Toddlers love play dough.  They love poking things into play dough.  And they really, really love birthdays.

As such, I give you: Birthday cake pretend play!

We used homemade play dough (unscented, though with kids who don't eat it as much some fragrance might have been fun), popsicle sticks, and green doilies.

The kids are very interested in birthdays, so I offered them these materials with the invitation that they might like to make birthday cakes.  

The got super-involved, which was nice at the end of the day!

Things started small, with them using the doilies as plates.
(I'd hoped the doilies would make nice imprints, but they're not thick enough)

This one is a hot dog

And here's the hot dog again after several minutes

And this is how your cake looks when your teacher finally lets you have as many popsicle sticks as you want!

They blew out the candles, sang happy birthday, named the colors of the sticks (without prompting) and used the sticks to cut their cakes into pieces.

Then we needed to have a little discussion about taking "pretend bites" instead of real ones.

This was our introduction to birthday play, using familiar materials in a familiar way.  Next week, we'll be introducing some new ideas into the mix.