With Christmas approaching, my kids are already in mood to do some Christmas themed crafts and activities. This is why I came up with this Christmas chocolate maker pretend play and turned it into a busy bag that both my toddler and preschooler enjoy playing! After all, they love eating chocolate, and making chocolate is as much fun!
Ingredients needed for Christmas Chocolate Maker Pretend Play Busy Bag are pretty basic and most people have them on hand:
- one or more plastic moulds recycled from chocolate advent calendar from previous years
- brown play doh (we also used red and white)
- bag large enough to put it all inside
- optional: plate for serving chocolate
It was fun watching my daughters pressing the play doh into little moulds and working hard to make some chocolate! They both enjoyed it and my older daughter even tried to combine the different colors (like for a flower shown on right picture). It was excellent exercise for their little finger, both moulding and then trying to get them out. What eventually worked the best was to flip the plastic plate with moulds and simply press out each of the shapes.
This activity can easily be adopted using fast drying clay to create small ornaments and magnets to give as presents to friends and family members. And I’m sure kids would enjoy it as much as they did with “making a chocolate” with play doh.
Check out these awesome ideas from some of our favorite kid blogger friends.FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:
Gingerbread Man Shape Matching Busy Bag // Powerful Mothering
Christmas Activities for Kids Printable Busy Bag // LalyMom
Christmas Counting Busy Bag // Coffee Cups and Crayons
Decorate a Play Dough Christmas Tree Play Kit // Mama. Papa. Bubba.
Gingerbread Button Counting Busy Bag // Wildflower Ramblings
Snowman Busy Bag // Frogs, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
Reusable Christmas Sticker Busy Bag // Still Playing School
Christmas Posting Busy Bag // Adventures of Adam
Christmas Tree Busy Bag // The Pleasantest Thing
Christmas Jingle Bells Fine Motor Busy Bag // Sugar Aunts
Printable Mix and Match Christmas Puzzles // Itsy Bitsy Fun
Christmas Chocolate Maker Busy Bag // Best Toys 4 Toddlers
Printable Q-tip Snowflakes // Playdough to Plato
Candy Cane Stripe Counting // Preschool Inspirations
An Early Reader Christmas Busy Bag // The Educators’ Spin on It
Related Posts:
5 Easy Busy Bags with Bottle Caps
Building Christmas Tree – Size Sequencing Practice
9Â Amazingly Easy Ways to Use Stickers for Learning
Learn with Play
Pipe Cleaner Fishing Game for Toddlers

One of my childhood memories is reusing the advent calendar mould. I used to prefer using the mould to actually eating the chocolates!
Hihihi! Good point! But hardly possible to turn into busy bag activity! 😉
I never thought to use candy molds for play dough – great idea! #FrugalFamily
Thanks for stopping by and hosting #FrugalFamily linky! Always find there great ideas!
I have used dough molds for candy and candy molds for dough.
Great! Love that you’re using things on hand and adding new value to items we usually trash!
This is a great list! pinning for future reference.
Thanks for sharing on last week’s #frugalfamilylinky
I would like you sent me different ideas, thank you