Cooking with Kids: Easy-Peasy Popsicles

Sweet Pea is 6 years old.

From:  I often freeze those tubes of yogurt for Sweet Pea.  One day, when she asked me to make them, we were out of tubes, but had some yogurt cups, so I offered to try to make popsicles out of those instead and they turned out great!

Material:

• Popsicle Sticks  (You can get them from Amazon, but we just bought ours at Micheal’s craft store).
• Yogurt in small tubs
• Sharp Knife
• Medium sized mixing bowl
• Very warm tap water.

Procedure:

• Wash and dry the popsicle craft sticks if you are overly concerned about them being dirty.
• Use the knife to cut a small slit in the center of the yogurt top. Do not make it too large or your popsicle stick will fall over sideways!

• Stick the popsicle sticks through the cut slit so they stand upright.

• Place the popsicles in the freezer for at  of hours

•  After the yogurt is completly frozen, remove the lid without disturbing the Popsicle stick by using a knife to slice the lid in half before peeling it off.

•  Fill the bowl full of very warm tap water.  Hold the yogurt container by the top while you hold the bottom in the warm water for 5-10 seconds.
• Pull gently on the popsicle stick.  If the popsicle is still stuck, return the container to the water for another 5-10 seconds.  Repeat until the popsicle easily releases from the container.

•  Hand the popsicle over to your tot!

Observations: Sweet Pea loved eating these.   Although I suspect that a child more used to traditional Popsicle might not find them sweet enough.

These were super fun and easy to make.  They are a perfect snack on a hot summer day.

It was tricky to poke the knife tip through the lid and cut a small enough slit to get the popsicle stick to stand up.  Elementary aged children could probably do this entire activity by themselves, but Sweet Pea was still a little too young.  Despite the fact that I did all of the preparation, she was still very excited about it and loved watching the process so I will go ahead and recommend this for all ages, even though younger tots will be doing more observing until it comes to the eating portion of the activity.

Notes from the Trenches:    As I mentioned, it is a little tricky to cut the lid of the yogurt container so I did that myself.  The only other problem I had was getting the popsicle out of the container, which I solved by briefly holding it in warm water.

Rating: 3 Stars * (Fun, Easy, Frugal)