I use this in my Occupational Therapy treatments with kids. I visit a couple schools each day and carry nearly all of my supplies in a bookbag or rolling bag, depending on the week. This birthday cake has been the perfect therapy tool this year. I can use this with many of my students while still addressing lots of individual goals. I have found that kids will do just about anything if it involves playing with this or any of the other Melissa and Doug food toys. We often use it as a relay game at the start of the session. I put all the cake and decorating pieces in one place and the cake plate about 10-15 feet away. I have kids crab walk, bear crawl, bunny hop, scooterboard, etc to get the cake pieces and decorations and then do the same movement back over to the cake plate to put the pieces together. It’s a GREAT way to incorporate gross motor skills, motor planning, and proprioceptive input before we sit down to work those fine motor skills. After the cake is all put together with their chosen decorations, we sing happy birthday. I’ve had so many birthdays in the past few weeks, I’m about 100 years old now! This cute little birthday cake also helps kids work on play skills at the same time. This sounds crazy, but I have so many students that don’t know how to appropriately play with toys. They throw toys, dump out multiple bins, chew on toys, or just ignore them all together. Using the cake and it’s many pieces, we work on social interactions, pretend play, interactive play, turn taking, making a choice, whatever that kiddo needs to work on to help them be successful in areas they’re struggling in. I’ve had multiple students with VERY limited vocabularies say “cake!” or “birthday!” in the middle of other activities to let me know they want to play with this particular toy. It was an incredible thing to hear these sweet babies let me know what they wanted when it’s normally such a struggle for them. I’m not a speech therapist, but I can imagine it would be a great tool for them too! You can adapt this toy to just about any need you’re addressing. Need to work on color identification? There are 6 different colored candles. Need to work on one to one counting? So many pieces for that. Need to work on sorting? Sort the “toppings.” Need 5 minutes of peace and quiet to unload the dishwasher? As a mom, I can attest that it works for that too. It’s been a great tool to facilitate all the the skills you can think of because everyone loves a birthday and can relate to celebrating one. I also use it as positive reinforcement. “When we finish this, we can play with the birthday cake!” Yes, that means I use it as a bribe. And it works! My students have been highly motivated by it! It’s easy to clean between students with our school-approved spray or wipes since we all live in Covid days and have to think about cleaning all the time. I’ve never had a Melissa and Doug toy, in therapy or with my own kids, that wasn’t top notch quality AND a hit with kids...this is no different! I’m secretly hoping my kids are ready to outgrow their Melissa and Doug toys so I can take them to work and give my students some new toys to play with. It’s always a blast to introduce new toys to my kids and my students. Melissa and Doug never disappoint!
