June 1st was National Donut Day, and even though it has come and gone it doesn’t mean we have to stop celebrating donuts. I am a big fan of donuts, and I would propose that these sugary little friends deserve a whole month of fanfare! So here are some donut themed books and activities if you share in my donut enthusiasm.

Donut Printing

This fun craft is great because there really isn’t a wrong way to do it. You can use a variety of supplies, many of which you may have on hand, to create a funky piece of art that could be used as a card, gift tag or fun decoration.

Supplies:

• Mini Chocolate or Strawberry donuts
• Paint in various colors; a combination of acrylic and puff paint is great
• Brush
• Cardstock
• Sprinkles

We dipped the mini donuts in various colored paints to create donut prints. The printing takes a little bit of practice to get down. We found that it helps to dip the donut and then place it on the paper and gently spin the donut, careful to not move the donut or the hole in the middle will be lost. We also popped any paint that was covering the hole of the donut. Of course my 3 year old just used the donut as a brush, and said he was making a “long john”. My boys enjoyed using the donuts, and I enjoyed adding puff paint and sprinkles to some and faces to others. If you decide to add sprinkles make sure you press them gently down into the paint so that they will stay. Give it a shot and see what you come up with, and with any luck you might have a few donuts left over for snacking,

Donut books to check out:

If you Give a Dog a Donut by Laura Numeroff

Donuts: The Hole Story by David W. Miles

The Hole Story of the Doughnut by Pat Miller

Please, Mr. Panda by Steve Antony

The Donut Chef by Bob Staake

Other Donut Themed Activities that you might like:

• Set up a pretend donut shop. Cut a variety of donuts out of cardboard to sell and “eat”.
• Have fun dreaming up new donut flavors. Turn it into a silly game by trying to come up with a flavor for each letter of the alphabet.
• Make donuts out of playdoh.
• Have some fun with math by polling friends and family on their favorite donut flavor and then creating a graph to represent the results.
• Share the donut love by surprising a friend, neighbor or community helper with some yummy donuts.

This is one part of a series of ideas for thrifty family fun on our Thrive & Dime blog.

About the writer: Formerly a school counselor, Megan now spends her days playing trucks, reading dinosaur books, dispensing snacks and adventuring with her three little men; ages 5, 2 and 6 months.