The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Pinkalicious: Pink Cloud Dough Cup Cakes!

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Make some cup cakes from pink cloud dough as a fun way to retell the popular picture book Pinkalicious!

One of the many joys of blogging is the community that develops around the readership and fellow blog authors. I have loved getting to hear about other people’s customs, traditions and ideas and also seeing the favourite books talked about in each country. 
 I found out about the very popular picture book, Pinkalicious, in this way and my girls LOVE it! If you are not familiar with it, it is a deliciously silly story about a naughty girl who eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns PINK! (cue hilarious laughter in this house, every time!)


One of our favourite things to do with stories is to being them to life through pretend play, puppets, story boxes or other creative methods. We combined our love for sensory play with a new idea to colour cloud dough and create some cupcakes, Pinkalicious style!

 If you haven’t made cloud dough before you really must try it and it couldn’t be easier! Simply stir half a cup of vegetable or baby oil into 4 cups of any type of flour. Mix it together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs, then use your hands to make it smooth. It can be moulded and formed like wet sand, but is half the mess. Perfect!

This time we coloured the dough by adding 2 tablespoons of bright pink powered paint and it instantly transformed into a vibrant play substance! (If you read the seaside cloud dough post you’ll remember I couldn’t get the dough to colour using food colouring. I bought some powdered paints straight after as I was determined for it to work and it does!) We bought our powder paints on eBay but most educational suppliers will carry it too.

 The girls set about forming little cakes with their hands and placed them into pink cupcake cases in muffin tins. Incidentally, this is great for sorting, counting, ordering and logical though processing skills!

They decorated them with Hama beads for sprinkles (my favourite use for Hama beads at the moment!) and added candles to the top. Then they used them to retell their favourite parts of the story, where Pinkalicious makes and eats the cakes until she turns pink. They also LOVE the surprise ending where her brother Peter eats the final cakes and turns pink himself, so that part was acted out with lots of giggles!
Have you tried bringing a story to life before? What did you do?
You may also like  to see our Goldilocks Pretend Play and our Little Red Riding Hood Story Box
Learning Links:
  • literacy: retell stories in thte correct sequence, use storybook language, take on a familiar character and remain in role during play, understand the key elements of a story
  • maths: counting, sorting, ordering, pattern making
Cakie: 3.9
Pop: 2.3
Bean: 17 wks


For more fantastic Pinkalicious ideas check out these pink play dough cupcakes from Juggling with Kids and this whole list of fun learning activities on the same theme to try from Creekside Learning!

Comments

  2. Kelly Wiffin says

    They look fantastic! Will have to make similar with my daughter! Have you/are you going to put this on Pinterest so I can add it to my to do (I am forgetful!)

  3. Anonymous says

    So, do you have any tips for easily getting cloud dough out of hair? My twin 3 year old girls do not play with cloud dough as intended…

  6. Growing a Jeweled Rose says

    Ah yes, I loved the idea of adding powdered paint to cloud dough when I first saw it on Famililcious. We have since made our cloud dough blue and yellow. I love the way the pink turned out here, and how you incorporated a book into the playtime.

    • Anna @ The Imagination Tree says

      I bought these powder paints in January after we failed to colour our beach seaside cloud dough with food colouring! It was so frustrating and I was determined to get it coloured somehow! Someone suggested powdered food colouring (which I’ve never heard of!) and I thought of powder paint. Luckily I found some great suppliers on eBay who have the most amazing range of colours!
      What did you turn your coloured dough into? Must come and have a look

    • Cerys @ Rainy Day Mum says

      I’m so glad that the powdered paints worked – I remember all the issues with the food colouring and the sand cloud dough (so glad that J decided ours was to be snow dough!) I still have the link to the ebay seller that you recommended then and will have to hunt out some I have a few other ideas that use poster paints as well.

  10. Julie @ Creekside Learning says

    Oh, Anna, I love Love LOVE this! I so want to make this cloud dough. Will look for the paints you mentioned. Pinned this to my pinkalicious board. Did you alert Pinkalicious Pinkerton on Pinterest to this? She will pin this on her boards, I’m sure. Perhaps even share on her facebook page. 🙂

  11. Cat @ The Tactile Child says

    Found this post yesterday and immediately made my first batch of cloud dough!!! It is my new favourite material its like dry goop I love it! My wee boy loved it too and we had great fun playing in the garden with it for most of the afternoon I cant wait to get my hands on some chalk to make all different colours and try some theme play like you’ve done here 🙂 thanks for the recipe!

  13. Anonymous says

    Can you please elaborate on your method? I added the powdered paint to the flour and then added the oil, but my paint powder clumped and didn’t incorporate properly so its just white with pink speckles. Fail! Guess not since we played with it anyway, but would like to make some uniform in color next time in lieu of the two tone. Thanks!

    • Anna Ranson says

      Sorry it didn’t work for you! We mixed the flour and oil first, and then added the paint afterwards. I think that would help with the colour disbursement. I hope you try again!