Valentines red velvet cake motor skills fun

Making cakes is a great way for kids to develop their motor skills and explore their senses.  We had fun making this valentines day themed red velvet cake with the kids.  We used a cake mix which made it easy and cutters so the kids could be as hands on or off as their senses dictated.

If you fancy doing something similar you will need:

• Red velvet cake mix and the required additional ingredients (egg, oil and water) or your own recipe
• Heart cutters
• Icing sugar
• Red or pink icing gel or pen

One of the reasons I go for mixes is that it avoids the chaos of getting ingredients in our house.  Like many kids on the autistic spectrum, our boys have difficulty with waiting. A cake mix makes it easy to avoid the disappointment over empty table syndrome, where you sit an an empty table and then have to wait for things to happen before an activity can start.

Most cake making involves using bilateral motor skills (using two hands together, like holding and mixing) and listening and following instructions.

Once you've made up, baked and cooled your cake with your kids, trim the 'top' off the cake with a big bread knife or similar (mummies, daddies and carers only).  This can then be used for making the hearts.  Just like with play dough cut out some heart shapes with the kids. Jane said she was 'stamping the hearts out' with the cutters - maybe not the best analogy? The good news is that there are left over pieces that can be munched!

After you have some hearts, you'll need something to stick them with - I used simple icing by mixing icing sugar and water and covered the top of the remaining cake.  The kids then stuck the hearts where they wished and there was a little extra fun adding some red squiggles using an icing pen - great for building hand strength as you need to squeeze the tube.

Finally, pop it into the fridge to let the icing set a bit and all done.  Hope you like our finished result - we certainly did!