Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children

Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children Making cookies is a great way to spend some quality time with your children. They like to help and here are some ways to get them started without a lot of fuss. You can buy or make up a little icing beforehand. If you are making the icing, use meringue powder instead of raw eggs. Here is an easy icing that dries glossy and makes a little over a cup. Beat 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of meringue powder with 2 cups of powdered sugar. Add ¼ cup of warm water and ½ teaspoon of your favorite extract flavor. Avoid maple or vanilla unless you have the clear-colored extracts or you will end up with brown icing. Mix on low for 4 minutes.

Separate your icing into several bowls. Let the kids add some red and green food coloring, but remember to keep some just plain white icing. Find some unused paint brushes if you have them for the little artists to dab on eyes or swirls with the colored icing. And arrange all the different sprinkles, sugars, chips, coconut flakes and candies that can be used for decoration. If you have any straws they can come in handy, also. If you are making cut out cookies, you can make it easy on yourself by cutting some simple round shapes. Suggest that they are faces, balloons or balls from their favorite sport or any other round object. Save a little dough, color it yellow or brown (equal amounts of red, blue and yellow coloring) and squeeze it through a garlic press to make hair. Attach it to the top of the round cookies as if it is hair and bake. Mixing food coloring with coconut flakes also makes hair. You can create Christmas carolers by using your straw to make a hole for the mouth before baking the cookies. Cut small pieces off a gumdrop and attach them with a little icing where the ears would be. They look like earmuffs. You can also place them into the dough before baking. If you have graham crackers, you don't have to make any cookies at all. Just turn the square so the points are at the top and bottom and make a Santa Claus face. Put down a small layer of white icing on all but the top inch or so of the triangular point. Before it dries attach coconut flakes on the bottom point for a beard. With red icing spread the top inch triangular point for a hat. Attach more coconut across the bottom of the red triangle for the hat trim and at the very tip to complete Santa's hat. A red cinnamon candy or red M&M-type candy will do for the nose. You could even use the tip of a red licorice stick or a small piece cut from a red gum drop. Eyes can be any other tiny colored candies you may have on hand or just some green-colored icing. Decorating doesn't have to be complex, nor do you need dozens of different-shaped cutters. Let the children paint a design on the round cookies with different colors using a paintbrush. They can write their names or initials in icing. Two teaspoons of vodka with ½ teaspoon of luster dust allows you to paint sparkling designs on top of dried icing. The alcohol will evaporate. Cutting out the center of a round cookie before baking creates a wreath that can be decorated. Placing a tiny open cookie cutter in the center of an iced cookie before it dries, allows you to add sprinkles on the inside of the cutter that will make the shape of the tiny cutter. Add a little icing in the center of a cookie and place an animal cracker on top. The opportunities are endless and only limited by you or your children's imagination. Easy Cookie Decorating Ideas For Children

Halloween Activities for Young Children

Celebrate the annual Fright Night with these seventeen fun (and not so scary) ideas, especially for young children.

1. Try your hand at face painting, or allow your children to paint each other's faces with washable face paints. 2. Make your own goodie bags. Set out some brown paper bags with the standard art supplies or embellish an old pillowcase with fabric paints. You can even spring for blank canvas baggies from your local discount store or craft store without spending a lot. 3. Tie-dye some T-shirts or socks using orange and black fabric dyes. 4. Make ghosts. Fold a piece of black construction paper in half and let your child squirt white paint inside. Squish the paint between the paper, let dry, then embellish the white ghost with paints, markers and other craft supplies. 5. Make homemade slime. This is always a popular activity. Here is a great recipe from Family Fun Magazine: http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=10684 6. Watch a Halloween movie. Make popcorn, cuddle up together in blankets, and take in some spooky cinematic sights. Harry Potter, Dracula, or Ghostbusters are great choices. For younger children, choose Heffalump Halloween, starring Winnie the Pooh or The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad by Disney Classics. 7. Eat creepy cuisine. Cut sandwiches or tortillas into Halloween shapes with cookie cutters. Create a ghoulish look with almost anything by mixing in a little green or red food coloring. 8. Play "Guess How Many Pumpkin Seeds." Each family member or party guest gets to take turns guessing how many pumpkin seeds are in a jar. The winner gets a prize. 9. Go apple bobbing. Fill a bucket or tub with water and apples and see how many apples each contestant can snag. 10. Make masks. Set out the art supplies and see who can make the scariest mask with a paper plate, construction paper, yarn, and markers or paints. 11. Create a family costume. Come up with a costume theme that the whole family can participate in. One year, we were all Star Wars characters. Maybe you will all be people from the Wild West or fuzzy forest animals. 12. Have a pumpkin seed spitting contest. 13. Roast pumpkin seeds. Clean the pumpkin seeds and toss them in just enough melted butter to lightly cover the seeds. (One tablespoon of butter is generally enough for the seeds from a medium sized pumpkin.) Salt the seeds, then spread them on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake at 250 degrees until golden brown, stirring occasionally. 14. Play Pin the Tail on the Black Cat (or Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin.) Any variation of Pin the Tail on the Donkey is fun for young kids. 15. Make a Scare Tape. Record you and your family members making spooky sounds. All you need is a tape recorder and a little imagination. Include footsteps, slamming doors, creepy howling werewolves, and crazy cackles. Play the tape from your front porch on Halloween. 16. Give each child an inexpensive disposable camera for the big night. This is a fun way to see what Halloween looks like from their perspective. I love to give my kids a blank journal and let them tell the story of memorable events, such as Halloween. This is a great tradition and really helps them to tell their personal stories, which they will cherish for many Halloweens to come. 17. Once Halloween is over, make sure to shop the post Halloween sales for fun additions to your dress up closet, which your young children are sure to enjoy year round. Happy haunting!

Easy Homemade Halloween Preschool Crafts and Children Halloween Games

Why do you need some easy, homemade Halloween preschool crafts and fun children Halloween games ideas? Moms, you know how difficult it can be to keep your preschoolers busy in the weeks before Halloween. Excitement is high for these youngsters. They can only think about wearing their costume and going out to Trick or Treat. It seems like years away for them. That is why you've got to check out our easy, homemade Halloween Preschool Crafts and our fun Halloween game ideas pages. You can find cheap, easy and fun crafts, games and activities for young kids.

You can find at least 10 craft ideas and activities to keep your youngsters happy and busy all on one web page. You will get a list of the materials you will need, directions to make each Halloween craft idea and there will also be some pictures so you can see what this kids craft is going to look like when you are done. You can also find sources of crafting supplies that you do not already have.

Homemade

Fun and easy homemade kids craft ideas exquisite for Halloween when they are combined with a fun kids game like how to make a Pin the Hat on the Scarecrow or pin the Wart on the Witch game. It's a simple, classic, fun kids game with a Halloween twist. It is the exquisite Halloween game to play at a party, at school or at home during house game night.

How about production some Green Slime? Find the instructions to production your own homemade batch of gooey green slime in an easy recipe form. There are also lots of fun kids games with a Halloween theme. Just one example is a game called, Mr. Skeleton, Where's Your Bones?

What would Halloween be with out some Magic Witch Potion? Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble. Your kids are going to think you are a genius or perhaps, since it is Halloween time, they will think that you are an amazingly marvelous witch. They just might believe that you went to school with Hermione and Harry Potter at Hogwarts. This makes for the exquisite homemade Halloween crafts idea.

More children Halloween games like Push the Pumpkin, Witch Hunt and Eyeball Race are all well marvelous for a kids Halloween party at home, or at school. They are also exquisite to keep your children out of the Halloween candy!

Fun craft ideas for the early weeks of October include Handprint Spiders, Footprint Ghosts and Glitter Ghosts. Ghost craft ideas are very beloved around Halloween! Then, of course, there's also Witch Hat, Halloween Bat, Spider Webs and Egg Carton Bats. You can use egg cartons for tons of different craft ideas for kids, so be sure to keep some around for time to come craft ideas. Holidays are more fun when you share the gift of imagination and time together with your kids! Be sure to keep your house happy and having fun with these free and easy homemade Halloween preschool crafts and these fun children Halloween games.

Easy Homemade Halloween Preschool Crafts and Children Halloween Games

Vegetable Cookies For Children

My grandbaby is a tiny minuscule toddler, and she does not eat well. I told her mommy, that I used to make vegetable cookies for her when she was little, to get her to take in nutrition. Thus, my daughter is feeding her daughter vegetable cookies now for nutrition.

The understanding is so simple. Just use your popular cookie method and add 1 can of mixed vegetables, drained, to it and you have vegetable cookies. The kids love them!

Cookies

You can even puree the veggies if you like and add them to the recipe. Someone else suggestion is add only ground up or pureed carrots to the recipe.

I would cut back on the sugar to make them more nutritious. You can add raisins or blueberries to make it super nutritious.

Can you just fantasize the relief you will have knowing that your toddler or child is eating something for a snack as nutritious as a vegetable cookie?

You can serve them with every meal they are so nutritious.

For a sweet treat, just add some butterscotch or chocolate morsels to the mixture and your cookies become sweet dillyitious!

In some recipes you may want to use less oil if the veggies are pureed.

You can use sugar cookie or oatmeal cookie recipes. You can also make muffins and add vegetables. All you need is imagination to take you added with this food aspect in mind.

Sit back and enjoy watching your child eat and grow with these vegetable cookie treats.

Pass this on to your friends and family with minuscule ones. They will love your for it!

Vegetable Cookies For Children