- Teach kids how to make their own ice cream.ice-cream image by Witold Krasowski from Fotolia.com
Kids enjoy making crafts, and they can get double the enjoyment out of making treats they can eat. Planning activities for youngsters that involve food are a good way to entertain them and give them a snack in the process. These edible activities that will teach your kids some interesting things about food. - Ice cream is a favorite snack among children, and if you can show them an easy way to make their own it will be something they will always remember.
According to the Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom website, ice cream freezes at 21 degrees Fahrenheit. The freezing point of water is lowered when salt is added to ice, which allows for an interesting activity that will allow kids to make their own ice cream in a plastic bag.
In a quart-sized zip sealed freezer bag, add a quarter cup of sugar, a half-teaspoon of vanilla extract, one cup of milk and one cup of whipping cream and seal the bag. It may be necessary to add a strip of duct tape across the seal to prevent leaking.
Place the quart bag inside of a gallon-sized bag of the same type and fill it mostly full with crushed ice. Add one cup of rock salt to the ice and seal the larger bag. Wrap the whole thing in a towel and begin shaking it for 10 minutes. During this time the cold salt water will cause the water in the milk to freeze and form vanilla ice cream in the inner bag. Open the bags up carefully and spoon the ice cream into cups to enjoy. - For the particularly brave youngster, this creepy snack will be a lot of fun to make and will provide a way to really impress, or otherwise gross out, his friends.
Go to a bait shop and pick up a bunch of mealworms. They are a common type of bait for fish, but your child will be interested to learn that they are good human food too, according to the University of Kentucky Entomology Department website. How good they really are is up to you.
The worms will need to be purged by placing them in a container of corn meal for 24 hours to empty their guts of any impurities. Wash the worms, discarding any that are dead, and place them on a paper towel for drying. They are ready to cook.
Place the mealworms on a baking sheet and dry roast them at 200 degrees in the oven for an hour or so -- until they are easily crushed. Use these dry roasted worms as a replacement for puffed rice cereal to make an unusual version of rice crispy treats. - Let your young ones make jewelry they can wear and then eat when they get tired of sporting it. This simple activity only requires long, thin licorice strips, different flavored cereals in the shape of small circles (such as Fruit Loops or Cheerios) small marshmallows and any other treats you can imagine that can be put on a string.
Thread the licorice through the cereal and push it through the middle of the marshmallows. Add any foods you wish to the string and then tie it together at the desired length to make a necklace or bracelet, according to the Create Kids Crafts website.
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