Want a way to turn snack time into fun time? Using yummy food embellishments, ordinary rice cakes can be turned into creatures that are silly, creepy, or just plain cute. This can be a great opportunity for your children to play with patterns on the flat, rice cake surface—a sneaky way for them to build upon their geometry foundations! Your children will exercise their imaginations as they make some special snacks that are good for them, too! Here is how to make Rice Cake Creatures!
What You Need:
- Miniature rice cakes
- Peanut butter
- Raisins or currants
- Pretzel sticks
- Sliced almonds
- Thinly sliced carrot or celery strips
- Green grapes
- Cream cheese
- Plates
- Bowls or plates for ingredients
- Butter knives
- Lots of napkins
What You Do:
- Place two rice cakes on each plate and give each child a small knife (plastic works fine). Julienne the vegetables to use as whiskers and cut the grapes in half to be rabbit tails. Put almonds, vegetables, currants and pretzels into several bowls to be shared.
- Demonstrate a rice mouse to your children. Show them how to spread peanut butter on a rice cake, use currants for eyes and a nose, half almonds for ears, vegetables for whiskers, and a pretzel for a tail.
- Next, show them how to make a bunny. Spread cream cheese on the rice cake, use almonds for ears, currants for eyes, vegetables for whiskers, and grape halves for tails.
- Now, encourage them to prepare their own animals, using the food in the bowls to get creative making animal parts.
- In making their animals, your children can practice making patterns, alternating between various food embellishments that are different colors or sizes.
I did this activity with my kids over the weekend and we had a great time creating our own creatures! Your kids will love this too!
Want to do more?
Any variety of healthy, little ingredients can be used to create any variety of creatures. Apple rounds or small crackers or shapes of bread can be used as the base. Cheese spread and other nut butters can be used as fur. For a special dessert treat, try using frosting!
This is a guest post from education.com I used to love using their site when I was teaching elementary school. It’s a great resource for teachers and homeschool Moms!
lauren @thesmilelines says
I am laughing because we were eating rice cakes as I saw this! We created one very quickly but will definitely come back to this. So cute and creative!
Shannon says
That is funny! My daughter loves rice cakes and we loved learning and snacking too 🙂