Pretend Play: Dandelion Soup

We've been having a lot of fun sharing images over on Instagram lately, so you may have already caught a preview of this activity earlier this week.

It's dandelion season, and despite my husband's best efforts, they are popping up all over our yard. I'd been waiting for a hot day to set up this pretend play invitation with a nature connection. It was also great water play for a hot afternoon on the deck.

I love finding simple ways to play with things we have on hand. Before we started playing I set up a bunch of kitchen materials that the boys could use to pretend to make soup with. I also had the boys pick a large container of dandelions, including stems and some leaves. 

For the play invitation I set the materials on their little picnic table to act like a small kitchen. Materials included: a large bowl, large pot, watering can, ladle, wooden spoon, cutting board, whisk, plastic knives and spoons, and plastic to-go containers. I filled our watering can with water. 

The boys instantly filled the bowl with water, and then got more water for the cooking pot. 

They then started to add in pieces of dandelion flowers and stems. They would stir and pretend to sample their soup. (Little Brother at age 2 did need some reminders just to pretend.)

Later they used the cutting board to chop up and peel the stems of the dandelions. Big Brother discovered they curled in the soup. 

The real fun came in pretending to ladle out and "serve" the soup to customers.

When the customer (mostly Mommy) decided it wasn't quite flavorful enough they added in some birdseed as flavoring. 

Finally they decided they had perfected their recipe!

Simple, fun, and creative play. A great way to use up some of the dandelions in the yard!

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