Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Play Dough Activities


Play dough is an activity that will keep my girls occupied for long periods of time. Lately we haven't been very creative with it so I went searching for some new ideas! We recently played with some homemade play dough and discovered that it was much softer than store bought and easier to use. I found the recipe and Lucy helped me mix it up today while Julia was napping. It was easy to make other than being hard to stir at the end. I doubled the recipe and left out any coloring until it was done so I could make three different colors. Here is the recipe, along with some other fun ideas you may enjoy!

Recipe

1 cup of flour

1 cup of water

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

A few drops of food coloring (or I pkg. Kool-aid mix with water for color and smell)

½ cup of salt

1 Tablespoon of cooking oil.

Combine ingredients. Heat and stir until mixture forms a soft ball. Put mixture onto wax paper until cool. Knead slightly to eliminate grainy texture. Store in tightly covered container. The recipe can be doubled.



Ideas
-stick toothpicks into a ball of dough to make a porcupine
-use toothpicks to make cages for animals
-hide a small object in a ball of play dough and let your child dig it out
-make snakes, balls, ropes, pizza, snowmen, flowers, a log cabin, or anything else you can think of
-use a rolling pin and cookie cutters (cut a wooden dowel the width of your child's hand and sand it a bit to make a perfect sized rolling pin)
-use play dough snakes to form letters
-Play dough mats: print the page and then laminate them. Simple shapes here - I chose the crown and butterfly to start with. Create jewels for the crown and spots for the butterfly!
-Brown Bear playdough mats here
-Chicka Chicka Boom Boom play mat here (use with alphabet cookie cutters or make your own letters)
-This is a great set to purchase, it comes with eyes, legs, noses, feet and more to create animals!
Do you have any other fun play dough ideas to share with us?

5 comments:

  1. My little grandson's favorite play dough color is the blue...SO our blue gets dry and crunchy very fast. I was amazed when I mixed about a 1/4 teaspoon of olive oil AND water into the dough and closed it up. It was sticky right after I mixed it but but the next time we took it out it was so soft and plyable again. Better than new and easiler to use.

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  2. Thanks for commenting, what a great way to recycle old play dough!

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  3. Nice dough playing:-)
    This is a site I want to share that your kids can make use of for their coloring needs, Thecolor.com.

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  4. I'm excited to try it with B! We really need to hang out more Chrity!!! I love your blog.

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  5. can you make something out ofplay dough n dry out n keep like clay ?

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