You read that right…we have carpet in our circa 1985 kitchen, which is why I had the egg dyeing kit in my cart at Aldi for a hot second before I started having visions. You know what I’m talking about…at first you have such ideal visions of doing a baking project with your offspring. Your child, smiling, lifts an evenly dyed eggshell carefully out of the dye, and gingerly sets it down in the designated area in the carton (that folded into the egg holder with no effort or tape or yelling).

And then you come back to reality and look more closely at the flimsy wire egg holder in the set and picture what would actually happen…the toddler trying to lift out the eggshell, but getting frustrated because the shell keeps crashing to the counter and breaking, while wet dye splatters on the carpet. So he uses his hands instead, which works to get the egg out, but he also crushes the delicate eggshell and now must wash his hands RIGHT NOW because they got dye on them, and basically your “fun project” dreams crumble like the spottily dyed eggshell.

So like any good mom, I put back the egg dyeing set and picked this up instead. I normally like to cook and bake from scratch, but I’ve started to embrace “good enough” at times in my motherhood, and this is no exception.

My goal here is a fun activity, and with easy directions and sturdy looking ingredients, I’m hoping it sets us up for success. It also lets me sneak in some at home speech and language enrichment.

The toddler is very into colors lately, so we’ll definitely identify the colors of the paint. There are also some new tools he hasn’t used in this set (like cookie cutters and a paint palette), so we’ll talk about the new vocabulary. And it may be aspirational, but we’ll *try* our darndest to work on some direction following as well.

Another way we’ll work in some speech and language is through the painting. My son has done watercolor painting once or twice, and so although he’s familiar with that process, we haven’t talked much about shapes (hearts, circles, lines, waves), or directions like “put it on the top of the egg,” so that will be new to him.

For older kids, I was thinking this kit offers some great practice with verbs that might be new (prepare, heat, shape, ice, decorate), , especially if they can read the directions themselves. You could do more elaborate direction following (First draw a yellow line on the top of the egg, and then add three red dots below the line), or if you really want to get wild, let them give you directions. We all know our children love to have the opportunity to boss us around.

The toddler and I haven’t yet had a chance to dive into this activity, but I’ll try to post some pictures when we do, and let you all know if it actually turns out to be relatively easy, or if we still end up cleaning food out of the kitchen carpet.

Let me know some of your favorite easy projects (or disasters!) to work on with your kiddos in the comments below!