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I love to bake with my kids and make fun treats, especially during the holidays. As part of our weekly Christmas Sensory series we are having so much fun exploring our senses along with some creative friends.
This week we are focusing on our sense of taste and we built our own snowman sugar cookies. They were delicious!
Baking with kids is great because there are so many wonderful learning skills embeded into the activity, it is so fun, and it is an awesome sensory experience!
During this activity we talked about sizes and shapes, practiced following directions, used our finger muscles, discussed colors, and did some counting. We also talked about our sense of taste and how some things taste spicy or sweet or creamy or crunchy. The treats we used to decorate the snowman had lots of textures so it made our conversation fun and filled with new vocabulary (especially for my littlest one- age 2).
When I was younger our family took plates of cookies out to friends each year. Each kid in our family had a signature cookie that they got to make. Building snowman sugar cookies was mine. I had so much fun passing along this tradition to my kids and telling them about it while we baked together.
Materials Needed:
- sugar cookie dough (we usually just buy Pillsbury store bought dough for this activity but if you have a good sugar cookie dough that retains it's shape and is yummy, pass it along!)
- baking sheets (I love my Chicago Metallic baking pans and my Anolon baking pans if you are looking for good ones)
- peanut butter cups
- M&Ms
- frosting (we used store bought frosting in cans that come with a decorating set)
- chocolate chips
- orange Starbursts
Directions:
To start off you need to preheat your oven to 350 degrees and then grease your baking pans.
Next you need to roll the sugar cookie dough into small little balls. Make each snowman cookie has three balls- a small one, a medium, and a large one. My kids loved making sure that their sugar cookie balls were in the right order. Place the balls next to one another to make a snowman.
Make sure you don't put the cookies too close together. Scroll down to see why.
Next, pop the cookies into the oven for 7-10 minutes (or until they are flat and look cooked all the way around... if they are getting dark brown on the edges then that is too late).
Notice that some of my cookies got squished together. They are easy to cut apart, but look cuter if you keep them further away from one another. Oh well!
Once the cookie cool off you are ready to decorate!
For my younger kids I draw on their cookies with frosting and give them eyes, a nose, buttons, and a spot for the hat. Next I give them the materials to build their snowman and they stick the items to the frosting since I tell them that the frosting is like their glue.
Once they are done decorating the cookies then I draw a scarf on the snowmen or they draw something else with the frosting and then we EAT THEM! Cookies don't last long at our house!
Have you ever build snowman cookies before? Do you have any other favorite holiday cookies that you make each year?
Here are a few of our favorite holiday treats that we like to make...
Christmas Tree Rice Crispy Treats
More Christmas sensory play activities
This activity is part of a season-long sensory play series brought to you by me, Christie, Kate, Ana, Cathy, and Meri.
This week we have an awesome selection of taste activities:
Cathy at Nurturestore has gluten free peppermint cremes.
Christie at Childhood 101 has lovely stained glass cookies and milk.
Kate at Picklebums has cute gingerbread muffins.
Ana at Babble Dabble Do has delicious Mexican hot chocolate.
Meri at Meri Cherry has lickable holiday wallpaper.
These are so cute! I shared this on Facebook.
Oh my kids will LOVE to do this!
We are a bit snowman crazy thanks to Frozen, but no snow here (it's summer here, but not even in winter) so these will be a hit!