Coffee for Kids

(27 Months)

Here's another reason to pour yourself one more cup of coffee.  Mmmmm coffee.  The kids need your coffee grinds and left over coffee.  Left over coffee?  Who has left over coffee?  Ok save a 1/2 of a cup it's for the kidabunks.  The delicious aroma that awakens the senses is just perfect for children's sensory play.  I saw coffee salt dough on Kaboose and knew we were going to do this.  I started saving our coffee grounds and within a few days we had more than enough to make a double batch of salt dough (we would have been fine with a single batch - recipe below, but with twins you never know).  This only takes minutes to make and it has a nice wheat color.  We'll definitely be doing this again.  Oh well, I guess I need to drink more coffee.  The sacrifices we make for our children.
     1 cup of used coffee grounds
     1/2 cup of cold coffee
     1 cup of flour
     1/2 cup of salt

Combine the above ingredients and then knead until it becomes a play-doh like consistency (you may need to add an extra tablespoon of flour if your grinds are too wet).  We floured our work surface, but you can alternatively tape down some wax paper.  We made blueberry pancakes, giant chocolate chip cookies, and then smushed them all together and made blueberry muffins.  We decorated our muffins with a dusting of flour (the kidabunks loved how to create a sprinkling of flour using their finger tips) and a handful of our sensory beans.  

Little Miss spent time not only placing the beans, but removing each bean and then replacing it back into the dough.  I love watching her little pincer fingers deliberately working, she's so serious while she's creating.  Then, there's Wild One who rushed through decorating his muffins, and then "borrowed" some of his sister's dough to make a giant muffin.

Your creations will only take a couple of days to harden.  We placed our muffins in our play kitchen's oven to "bake".  We're looking forward to playing with them in a few days.