For parents who want their children to enjoy imaginative playtime while learning useful skills, the Bake and Decorate Cupcake Set is an ideal choice. This adorable set is packed with educational opportunities, but children are likely to have too much fun playing baker to notice they're learning.

The brown and yellow cupcake bottoms and pastel icing tops invite children to mix and match, creating their favorite combinations. For younger kids, this can help improve color recognition and counting skills, especially if a caregiver joins the fun and prompts discussions. For older children, it allows creativity to flourish, especially when they use the markers to draw polka dots and fun shapes on the icing tops.

The set also helps children develop hand-eye coordination. Little hands will love placing and removing the icing tops and candles. Children will also enjoy using the markers to garnish the cupcakes and gain fine motor skills that come in handy for schoolwork, sports, and other activities. Parents and children alike will be charmed by the Bake and Decorate Cupcake Set's wooden components. The wooden cupcake bottoms are painted yellow and brown--vanilla and chocolate--and the colorful candles are each decorated with a barbershop-pole design and topped with a painted flame.

For authenticity, the plastic muffin tray is silver-toned, giving it the look of a metal baking tray. Paper cupcake liners fit in the tray, so children can feel like they're really baking. Perhaps most realistic of all, a quilted oven mitt has a checkered red-and-white pattern and is child-sized to fit little hands.