JULY 7th is World Chocolate Day!
Of COURSE you can choose to make it Chocolate Day any day you choose.
Food ideas:
- Make your own chocolate:
https://healthyrecipesblogs.com/homemade-chocolate/
- Buy or make a chocolate dipping sauce for a fresh fruit platter.
- Nutella on any kind of bread, crisp or cracker.
- Any grocery store check out isle is full of choices.
- Chocolate cake, mousse, cookies, muffins!
- A walk through the bulk foods isle will also provide you with a number of chocolate options.
- Adding chocolate chips to pancakes, waffles or as a face in yogurt.
- Celery, peanut butter (or your nut free version) & chocolate chips = ants on a log!
- Use chocolate chips or chocolate buttons as a counting exercise, getting the answers right means you get to eat them!
- Bake or purchase a plain cake or plain sugar cookies, fill piping bags with chocolate icing & allow your children to decorate them.
- Or homemade chocolate yogurt, who knew! https://healthyrecipesblogs.com/chocolate-yogurt/
Craft ideas:
Using what’s available in your house or you may need to get a few things from the store.
Paper, pencils, crayons, markers, stickers, paint or pastels.
- Empty egg cartons can look a lot like chocolate boxes, provide some coloured paper, glue & scissors, allowing your children to create yummy chocolates for each opening in the carton.
- Dirt & water mixed together looks an awful lot like chocolate to me, mud pies anyone?
- Print out the chocolate bar image below. Have your children colour, draw or paint the chocolate pieces. Then have them cut them into strips or individual chocolates. Ask them to make as many different designs with the pieces as they can. These too can be great for counting, making patterns, creating a road, using them as bricks or imagining them as a snake!
- Cut out shapes of cakes, cup cakes, ice cream cones & dessert cups. Provide stickers & stamps for your children to decorate the desserts.
Book ideas:
Already on your shelf, get it from the library or borrow it from a friend.
Classroom ideas:
This section will be back in September xo
Mindful Minutes:
Time spent together doing something that acknowledges the day.
The first time you give your children a piece of chocolate to eat, give them a tiny piece. Ask them to hold it in their mouth & to feel the texture, flavor & the smell. Ask them to tell you all them all. Introduce the concept of savoring the mouthful. Enjoying the feeling of it being in their mouth.
We also know the word chocolate can be used as a color description. For example a chocolate Labrador dog. Ask your children to tell you how many chocolate colored things they know & listen for imagination & conversation starters.
Doing fun things with our children creates a deeper connection with them.
With deeper connection we create opportunities to talk, to laugh & to be seen experiencing joy, which is so important! Love, Stacey
Putting PLAY into Parenting