Stained Glass Jello

making stained glass jello with preschoolers
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I want to perfect this recipe before Christmas because I think it has a lot of potential for fun festive treats and it’s great for helping preschoolers with cutting/dumping/mixing and colors.  I remember eating a TON of jello as a kid, and it’s not as fatty/sweet/deadly as cake, you can mix it with fruit for a lighter dessert and it’s bouncy and fun.  How can you not like jello?

I found so many recipes for stained glass jello using sweetened condensed milk, but I didn’t have that on hand.  This recipe uses just regular milk and the milk jello part turned out just fine.  I’m actually tempted to use coconut milk next time, or even a light colored juice because my guys sad they were not big fans of the milk jello.  (I liked it.)

stained glass jello is fun to make with kids

I made the colored jello at night, but I had the boys help me make the milk jello.  You have to boil the milk so the boys had to practice being careful with a hot liquid.  (Believe me, I supervised this part big time.)

I poured the milk mixture into a big pan then let the guys go wild cutting and spooning jello blobs into the pan.  (If you wanted to make it look pretty you should definitely just make little cubes and drop them in.  I was more about the process here and wanted my guys to be entertained and leave me alone for a little while ‘explore’.)

stained glass jello with kids is fun

There was a lot of tasting but if you threw some cut up fruit in with the mixture, it’s a decently healthy snack. (And if I was making this for guests, I would do this sans helpers.)

easy cooking with kids making stained glass jello

After we put our mixture in the fridge, the guys enjoyed picking out cool cookie cutter shapes and cutting out neat stained glass designs.

stained glass jello how to with kids

Overall, this is a fantastic activity if you like crafting with your kids but don’t want to hang the by-product on your fridge.  (PS. This one won’t last long IN it.)