Ice Cream Party!

We had a progressive ice cream party last night for our playgroup, in honor of National Night Out. This is a really easy event to organize if you have a neighborhood or playgroup you think would enjoy it. Basically I sent out a message asking for host households and decided on the three closest together since we had very small walkers. For adults or older kids you can all bike from location to location and can be more spread out. I also asked for volunteers from participants who weren't hosting to bring ice cream to the last house or toppings to house two. Then we all just met at the first house, picked up our cones, went to the second house to gather toppings in our cones or in bags or cupcake wrappers, and ended at the third house to fill the cones with ice cream, add our toppings, and eat and socialize. It was a little backwards, but it got us all walking from house to house and enabled us to take the ice cream in and out of the freezer at the last house as needed. It was a ton of fun! Using little spoons and scoops for toppings is also great practice for the little ones.
Clara left her sprinkles at the bottom of her cone--best for last!

We had the toppings station in our yard and Clara loved helping prepare.Crushing cookies
Peanut pieces
Unwrapping butterscotch candies
Pounding the butterscotch pieces
Some pouring practice
We also had shredded coconut, assorted sprinkles, cut fruit and mini marshmallows. Ideas for things young children could prepare are to slice bananas with a dull knife, cut hulled strawberries, or to dip cones in chocolate--yum!