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Decorate the Cake!

For a birthday party or a sweet treat,
can you make a nice tasty cake?

Pre-braille Activity

  • Fine motor skills
  • Pretend play
  • Tactile exploration

Level: 1

Number of players: 1 and +

Duration: 10 min

Skills:

  • Discover the “spatial organisation of a page”

  • Develop hand and finger strength

  • Develop tactile exploration

  • Comply with simple directions

Cakes seem to taste better when they are beautifully decorated.
So decorate the cake!

Goals

To develop fine motor skills, exploration of the baseplate and creativity.

The adult prepares

  • 1 baseplate

  • 10 random bricks in a bowl

The children play

1

Tell the child that the baseplate is a giant cake and that all the bricks are chocolate chips or sweets.

Ask them to decorate the cake by placing the sweets wherever they like on the baseplate, without letting them touch each other.

Children love this pretend-play activity and easily achieve the goal.
Joy is at the heart of play. It allows children to enjoy a task for its own sake, and to feel the thrill of surprise, insight or success after overcoming challenges.

These children are under 4 years old. They do the activity with DUPLO bricks.

Let’s pretend it’s a giant cake.
And here, in the bowl, you have chocolate chips.
And we want to put chocolate chips… Yes, it’s a chocolate chip! Everywhere to decorate the cake. Can you put them all over the cake?
Oh, you’re fast!
I’m putting it on the… strawberry.
Oh, strawberry. Very good.
Oh, look, and blueberry.
Blueberry? That’s perfect.
Chocolate chip is right here.
And this is a pear.
And this is a not-peeled pear, it’s very healthy.
We gotta get an apple!
Apple?
Okay.
And we want all over the cake, everywhere.
And then can you look at where there is some space to decorate?
Another cake!
-Another decoration.
So we have here lots of space to decorate. So another decoration, we still have room here,
Maybe you can take a decoration…
Yes, just one.
Okay.
How many do you have?
Four.
-Two.
One and two.
It’s the last one.
Can you put it here?
Let us check the cake.
So, what do you have on top of your cake?
What kind of decoration did you say
you have?
All kinds.
Here we had chocolate chips.
I have one chocolate chip.

Facilitation tips

  • Encourage bilateral hand exploration; coordination needs to be stimulated and developed for braille reading skills.

  • Ask the child to explore the baseplate to make sure the bricks are placed all over it.

  • Use a smaller baseplate that can be held in one hand. If necessary, change the number of bricks.

  • Cook a real cake and add decorations to it.