Miss K, at age 5, is still very fond of her toy kitchen. She has lots of pretend food to cook, such as rock cakes, toilet roll fish and even the glitter sponge cakes we made a long time ago are still going strong. Sometimes she doesn’t even need food that looks real, ordinary round seed pods become chocolate balls, a few sea shells become biscuits and she is happy as happy can be in her little cafe world. Recently we collected a few seed pods and they somehow migrated from my craft basket into her toy kitchen and before long were served to me on a little plastic platter as a delicious meatballs. So these meatballs and pasta I have made were not really my idea, I took it from Miss K and tried to make it look a bit more real for her – of course, they are now the most popular choice on the menu of her pretend play cafe. To make some for your own toy kitchen at home is pretty simple.
You will need:
– One standard sized piece of yellow felt for the pasta, plus a print out of this template
– A few pieces of double sided tape
– Some round seed pods or something else that is round and small for the meatballs
– Mod podge, or PVA (craft/school) glue mixed at a 1:1 ratio with water
– Red tissue paper cut into small squares (approx 10cm x 10cm)
– A paintbrush & scissors
How to:
Once you have printed out the template, attach it to your piece of felt with some double sided tape. It doesn’t need to cover the entire back of the felt, but place it across-ways so that the paper is still attached to the felt as you cut it into strips.
Then peel the felt off the paper, removing the small piece of tape that attached it. You now have pasta!
Next, paint some mod podge onto your seed pod and wrap a square of red paper around it. Paint a little bit more over the outside to make it shiny, but beware not to make it too thick or it will take forever to dry.
Mine is a bit too thick, and it did seem to take forever to dry! It’s a good idea to paint a thin layer on one side, then once that is dry turn the ball over and do the other side so it won’t stick to the surface it is sitting on. I have placed mine onto a plastic plate as a drying tray, so that I could move it out of the way and also because if you lay it on paper the paper can get stuck to the ball and wouldn’t come off.
… and that’s all there is to it!
I put them in a plastic container all together for storage when not being used.
If you are interest in more crafty ideas for pretend play food craft, try visiting my play food board on Pinterest.
Toys that are meant to look like real food are a joy when you’re a kid. I felt like I knew how to cook. Thank you for the post!
I can’t get over how real those look! Wish I’d seen these while my kids were still in the play kitchen stage.
They are so fun! My daughters are both school aged now and still they play with them.