Decorating with Kids

Do you feel overwhelmed at the thought of decorating with your small children? It certainly is an adventure, and it can be a fun one! I believe I first involved my son, Eli, in the decorating process when he was 3. He’s now 5 and my daughter, Kaylee, is 3 and she’s been decorating since she was 2! Here’s a few tips to make it easy and doable for everyone involved.

• Give each kid (adults too!) their own cookie sheet to work on and help contain any mess.
• Sprinkles each get their own small bowl. It is much easier (and less messy) for little fingers to pick up sprinkles out of a bowl and put them on their cookie rather than shake the sprinkles onto their cookie from a container.
• Put aprons or a play clothes on your kiddos (mom’s aprons work great!), or at least the kid(s) you KNOW will touch everything with frosting on their hands. We all have at least one of those!
• Decorate your own cookies while they’re doing theirs. You deserve to have fun too! Do I need to say it again? You get to have fun too! Plus, focusing on your own decorating greatly reduces any needs you might have to make sure they decorate “properly.” Not that I know from personal experience or anything. Your child’s creativity will shine when they are given free reign (within the cookie sheet that is). So what if icing is literally falling off the sides of the cookies? Who cares if they make a mountain of sprinkles onto one spot? Oh well if they mix all the sprinkles together instead of keeping them separate (unless you’re sharing sprinkles with them, then I may beg to differ). The goal is for everyone to have fun. So have fun focusing on your own cookies and leave everyone else to theirs 🙂
• Take pictures of them decorating. Take pictures of you decorating with them. Then show me what fun you had making your creations!