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One of the difficult things about having children (and all of their friends) over to your house for a play date, a birthday party or any regular day in general, is that, as an adult, it takes significantly more effort to come up with ways to entertain kids than it should. So you usually end up losing a kid or two for a couple of hours or they’re all bored and want to go home.

You can’t just plug in a movie and you can’t just read them a story. Kids want to be active and creative. Above all, they want to make a mess that they don’t have to clean up.

So how do you combine creativity, activity and a mess that you don’t have to spend five hours cleaning up?

The answer is simple: the activity table, or the activity mat.

On a nice, sunny, calm day, kids are apt to want to be outside. If you have a picnic table or a patio, you’re in great shape. If not, you can always buy a plastic table cloth from the local grocery store or discount store and lay it out on the grass. On not-so-nice days, you can do the same thing on your kitchen table or living room floor.

The great thing about the plastic table cloths is that the kids can spill on them and it won’t soak through onto your table or your carpet. When everything is said and done, you can just throw it out.

But what kinds of activities can you do that will keep the kids occupied?

Believe it or not, keeping kids entertained doesn’t take a lot of thought, a lot of money or a mad dash to the store or game closet.

One thing most parents know is that kids will take any kind of paint you are willing to give them and they will use it to make a masterpiece—if you’re not careful that masterpiece could be on your dining room walls, your windows, your carpets, your linens…and, use your imagination…it could be anywhere.

But on the activity mat, you can give the whole group of kids their own individual papers to paint on or you can lay one huge sheet of paper down and let all of the children collaborate. But what about the paint???

If you’re not so daring, keep a few non-toxic, washable water color paint sets on hand. They’re inexpensive, they’re easy to store and unlike other paints, they’re supposed to dry up.

If you’re a little more adventurous or you don’t have water colors on hand, you can always mix a little food coloring with some water in a cup. You can make dozens of different colors with only the four basic colors—red, yellow, green, blue—that come in the small box you’ll find on the baking aisle in the local grocery store. While you’ll normally find food coloring associated with cupcake decorating ideas, these tiny little bottles work wonders on just about every activity you can dream up for young children.

The best part about food coloring is that you can use it for nearly every activity you’re going to do with a large group of children.

Obviously, the kids will paint for hours but eventually, two or three of them will get bored and you’re going to need a back-up plan.

So what are you going to do? If you’re prepared you can be making your back up plan on the kitchen stove in less time than it takes the kids to get bored of their water color paintings.

It’s called salt dough. It’s easy to make on the stove, it cools quickly and you can color it with the same food colorings you used for the water colors. If you wait until after the kids are finished painting, you can actually use the paints you made so you don’t have to use as much water and food coloring to make the new salt dough.

The great thing about salt dough isn’t just that it’s easy to make but it’s cheap, so if it dries out or gets ruined you don’t have to worry about replacing it. Even better, if you pack it well, salt dough can keep for quite a while. But what if you don’t want it to keep?

Salt dough can dry and get hard as a rock. So if the kids want to create sculptures that they can give to Mom and Dad when they finally leave your house, all you have to do is hand over the colored dough and let them explore their creativity and their many options.

But of course, having a group of kids in your house doesn’t stop at fun and games, you also have to have good food and good treats to keep them happy and keep their tummies full.

An all-time favorite that will save you time is cupcakes because cupcakes can be both a treat and an activity, and just like all other good activities, cupcakes can be decorated outdoors.

Cup cake decorations come in all shapes and sizes…and all make-ups too. Your load of cup cake decorations can come from the scrapbooking bin, the candy jar or you can offer up the regular favorites like sprinkles and chocolate chips. Let the kids come up with their own cupcake decorating ideas so they can have fun while they eat!

No matter what cup cake recipe you choose, the kids will be able to decorate their cupcakes however they want. And with plenty of cupcake frosting recipes that deliver white, colorable icing, the kids will also be able to use your food coloring to mix their own frosting colors.

Your cup cake recipe and your cupcake icing recipes won’t typically tell you how to mix in food coloring. It’s probably best to mix a small amount in and add as you go. You can always add more but you can’t add less.

From playdough to cupcakes, you can always count on the simplest ideas to make your play dates and kid parties a resounding success!

Tags: cupcake decorating ideas | cupcake frosting recipes | cupcake frosting recipes | cupcake decorations | cupcake decorations | cup cake recipe | cup cake recipe | cupcakes

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Vegetable gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.