Mint Choc Chip Play Dough Ice Cream Recipe

Make some Mint Choc Chip play dough for a fun, scented sensory pretend play time! Fantastic for using in role play ice cream parlour set ups, exploring with added extras and developing fine motor strength as they play.

As you know we are passionate about all things play dough! Ever since Cakie was 1 we have been regularly making our own and have had so much fun experimenting with different flavours, colours, added extras and creative ways to use it in play! This week we had fun making up some different play dough ice cream flavours for some ice cream van role play (coming up soon!)

The girls love to make play dough and can do most of it by themselves now, following our very easy, 4 minute no-cook recipe [adults only at the boiling water stage though!] This time we added green gel food colouring to the boiling water before we mixed it in, and then a few drops of peppermint essence at the kneading stage. They rolled the kneaded ball of dough into some green glitter and worked it in until it was evenly spread.

I cut lots of little squares to represent chocolate chips from brown craft foam and they added them to the dough to turn it into Mint Choc Chip ice cream for pretend play! We set it out with two rolled pieces of yellow craft foam (stuck along one edge) to represent cones, which they helped draw patterns onto with brown pens, more chocolate chips for decorating and some coffee scoops as an Invitation to Play together!

They got stuck straight in and took orders for ice creams from all of their toys. Scooping into the soft dough was a great  fine and gross motor strengthening exercise and took a lot of concentration to form into a neat ball shape.

 

 

Cakie made ice cream signs to stick in our role play shop so that people would know what we were selling, then sold them for 5 gold coins each from our pirate treasure stash (we have a bazillion gold coins left over from Pop’s pirate party in the Spring!)

We have some more ice cream play dough flavours coming up next week so pop back and visit then!

Extend the play:

Try making menus and signs to place in a role play ice cream parlour for pretend play fun and learning

Add a range of other materials for making sprinkles and decorations, and ask the kids to design their own

Invent some brand new flavours and ask the kids to come up with wonderful names for them!

 

What they are learning as they play:

maths: counting out cupfuls accurately when following a recipe

creativity: using imaginations to make one object represent another in play, creating role-play scenarios

physical: fine and gross motor development through pinching, squeezing, twisting, rolling, flattening and scooping play dough with hands and added tools

Cakie: 4.9

Pop: 3.2

Bean: 15 mos

See our A-Z of play dough recipes and activities here for a huge list of fun flavours, recipes and ways to play!

Read all about the benefits of playing with play dough here, and get some inspiration for building a play dough tool kit!