Cooking with Kids~Seashell Snack & Play

This month’s theme for the Poppins Book Nook is Beach and Ocean.  The girls took a big interest in seashells earlier this summer, and that inspired a lot of play and learning. Today I’m sharing one of their favorite shell activities…a tasty treat with an open invitation to play with your food!

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Find all of our beach activities in our printable lesson plans

for home preschool and preschool classrooms.

When we read There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell! Lovey asked if we could find some shells to eat. She knew we couldn’t eat real shells, but it did start the discussion that inspired this little kids snack.

Ingredients

• Coconut cream pudding
• Chocolate pudding
• Cool whip
• Blue and red food coloring
• Graham crackers
• Shell mold
• Candy & lollipop Mold/Seashell (We have two of them)

Directions

• Have kids help make the chocolate pudding and the coconut pudding.  Even young toddlers can help stir. We scooped a small amount of the coconut pudding into its own container and added a couple drops of red food coloring to make the pink seashells.
• Before you place the containers of pudding in the fridge to set, fill the seashell candy mold with pudding. We used a funnel to make pouring a little easier and less messy. Then we placed the mold in the freezer so we would have frozen seashells for our treat.
• Place a few graham crackers in a zip-top bag and let kids crush them up. If you want leave some whole so the kids can scoop the pudding.
• Add a couple drops of blue food coloring to some cool whip to make the “ocean water.” Blue jell-o would also be great for this part of the snack, but we were a little impatient that day and wanted to get to playing and eating!
• Once the pudding shells are frozen, take them out of the freezer and let them sit for a few minutes. They should melt just enough to come out of mold easily.
• Have kids help arrange all of the ingredients on a tray (or in individual snack cups) to make their own sandy beach summer snack.

We had been outside playing in the kiddie pool, so this was a nice little treat to bring out. It was both a snack and an invitation to play with your food! No worries about getting too messy or needing to clean up. They were free to snack and play as they wanted.

Tinker immediately felt the frozen pudding seashells and decided to test them out. “Choc-it, Momma!!”

Lovey decided to test out the cool whip…first by eating, then by painting herself with it!

It was a bit messy–but that was the point! Full bellies and happy little ones!

Do you ever encourage your kids to play with their food?

Get a Full Week of Beach Theme Learning and Play

Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.

This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:

1) Beach 5 Senses Recording Sheet
2) Initial Sound Clip Cards
3) Seashell and Bucket Rhyming Game (-en, -at, -et, and -ug word families)
4) Seashore Counting Mats for Numbers 1-15
5) At the Beach Emergent Reader (2 Versions)
6) 1-35 Beach Theme Calendar and Number Cards
7) Beach Pattern and Counting Seashell Cards
8) Sand Castle Shape Matching Game
9) Uppercase and Lowercase Alphabet Matching Flip Flop Cards

Get Your Lesson Plans

Home Preschool Beach Theme Lesson Plans

Preschool Classroom Beach Theme Lesson Plans

Find more inspiration in our ocean theme.