Sweet treats for kids

What's here

Twelve treats that wobble, spin, drip, and squish when tapped. This is the dessert table of the app: cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, and friends, each one animated and each one sharing a plain, happy fact about itself. No lectures live on this page. These are just fun words, and food words happen to be some of the most motivating words a toddler ever learns, because they name things a toddler has strong opinions about.

Meet these first

• Cookie, a yummy round treat, and chocolate chip is a favorite.
• Ice Cream Cone, a cold, sweet scoop you have to lick before it drips.
• Cupcake, a tiny cake topped with swirly frosting and colorful sprinkles.
• Donut, a round, sweet ring with a little hole right in the middle.
• Cotton Candy, fluffy spun sugar that melts the moment it touches your tongue.
• Marshmallow, soft and squishy, and extra yummy toasted by a campfire.
• Lollipop, swirly candy on a stick that you lick round and round.
• Gingerbread Man, a cookie shaped like a person, with little icing buttons.

Cake Slice, Candy Cane, and a couple of wobbly, frosty friends fill out the dozen.

How to play (60 seconds)

Play pretend bakery. Your toddler taps a treat, and you both "eat" it with big exaggerated chomps and an mmmm. Then take their order: "one cookie, please!" and have them find and tap it for you. Say thank you, chomp, order the next one. Toddlers love being the one who serves. Finish with the marshmallow: tap it, then squish an imaginary one between your palms together, slowly, with sound effects.

Good to know

Food words earn their keep fast. A toddler who can say "cookie" has acquired a word with real power in their daily life, and words with power get repeated. The pretend-eating game also sneaks in polite-words practice, please, thank you, more, all-done, which are workhorse first words. Playing waiter and customer is turn-taking, and turn-taking is the rhythm all conversation is built on.

Keep exploring

The free Starter Pack on the printables page has first-words cards and a 50-word checklist, and yes, snack words are well represented.

For the other side of the plate, fruits-and-vegetables has the produce aisle. Christmas brings back the gingerbread man and candy cane in their natural season, shapes-and-colors pairs nicely with round donuts and triangle cake slices, and feelings covers the face your toddler makes when the ice cream is gone. The homepage has everything.