DESIGN, MAKE

Pom-Pom Ice-Cream

On Being A ‘Play at Home Mom’

I think I had read once, on the online magazine – ‘Parenting’ that to actually enjoy playing with your child try thinking back to the kind of pretend play you used to enjoy in your own childhood and play the same with your kids. For me, one of the things I used to love was making anything in miniature form. A love of miniature has followed me through to adulthood. So inspired by a library book and hazy memories of seeing some super-mum make adorable pom-pom ice creams with her kids on Instagram, I set off with high hopes to be that kind of mother and make some as a quiet time activity with my son (while his baby sister was having a nap). Turns out it was easy. And fun. And totally cute. And that mum was prob just like you and me (so basically a super-mum, I mean aren’t we all?)

There are countless ways you could do this, here’s how we did it:

Materials : Scissors, small stapler or hot gun , Elmer’s glue, pompoms, brown paper, burlap (if you are a rice kind of family you can cut up the burlap sack that oftentimes rice is sold in)

Method – You can see in the background of this photo my 5yr old is layering a cut out triangle of brown paper on top of a cut out triangle of burlap. Stick them together to make one triangle.

Fold the triangle to make a cone shape (mamas with samosa making experience will know this is easy)

Use a glue gun or staples to keep the paper and burlap in the shape of a cone.

Add the Pom pom ‘Flavors’ with a dab of Elmer’s glue.

The vanilla swirl I made with white play dough. Sprinkle with glitter.

The ice lollies are mini ice lolly sticks with paper cut out shapes stuck either side. we added glitter and decorations to them later.

By this time little one was awake and older one was excited to show her what he had made ‘for her’.

We did this months ago, and the kids still play with this ‘home-made’ pretend food till now. They have held up surprisingly well. The play dough one breaking only recently!

Ice cream play is not new to us. A few years ago, when a lovely friend surprised Ismail with the generous gift of an easel/chalk board one of the first things he wanted to play was ‘restaurants’. This time we had the most fun making the menus. Here is the ‘dessert menu’. He dictated the flavors and choice of chalk color, I wrote them down. He was three at the time so writing was no where near the horizon for him then, but this would make an excellent ‘game’ of writing and spelling practice for older kids. It would have actually been an ideal extension of the pom-pom ice creams activity … how adorable to have a chalk board menu outside the mini shop? But hey, I am not Pinterest perfect nor am I so organised!