Homemade Playdough
Sep. 28th | Posted by Nicky
10 comments
We’ve been learnng colours all week and one of the pieces of the pie was making homemade playdough. The girls got to choose the colours, and as they were playing I constantly reminded them about which colour was which. Daddy also did a day of colours: going through the colour book, finding things in the fridge that are each colour, picking a felt each of each colour, and drawing the bananas, oranges, cabbage and beer (blue). We try to make it fun. And now they are doing quite well with the colours… green and orange as still evasive for them though. Jrock said “how many million times do I have to show them green?” in a semi-exasperated tone. A gazillion, I guess!
For your homemade pleasure, here is a copy of the recipe I use for homemade playdough. Remember, you need to keep it away from air in a tight ziplock bag in the fridge when you aren’t using it, or it will turn as hard as a rock.
Cooked Playdough
3 cups flour
1.5 cups salt
6 tsp cream of tarter
3 tbsp oil
3 cups water
Dissolve salt in the water.
Pour all ingredients into a large pot.
Stir constantly over medium heat until a ball forms by pulling away from the sides.
Knead the dough mixture until the texture matches playdough (1-2 minutes). Divide the dough and add a few drops of food dye to each portion.
Store in a tight ziplock bag. Should last for at least 3 months.
Your daughters are so beautiful!!!! Thanks for posting so many pictures of your journey….it gives us hope that one day our dreams will come true also.
We add different packages of kool aid to make the colors of our play dough. Makes for a fabulous smell also!!!!
Koolaid! I never thouht of that… cool! I uppose Jello would work too…
Cheers
You making playdough brings back memories. My mom used to make us playdough all the time when we were kids. Reading the recipe, I could almost smell it. Looks like the girls are having a great time. Kool-aid will be the perfect way to make bright green and orange playdough
Heidi
We often use that recipe for our playdough too. Can you believe that our daughter Maya likes to eat it? I may as well feed her a salt block. Ew! To get really bright colours we use the food colouring from Michaels that is used in cake decorating- it’s a gel and the colours turn out really nice. The koolaid would smell nicer though!
The girls are adorable as always!
Just make sure they don’t eat it…I made the mistake of using kool aid and jello once and it smelled so good my Kindergarteners kept tasting it. Of course, they only tried it once, but still…!
Nicky, I would love to talk to you about changing our request to older child, possibly siblings. If you email me your #, can I call you??
Claire
Our most artsy girl didn’t know all of her colors until she was about 7. I even took her in to have her tested for color blindness.
Really how many shades of green our out there in the world
Look forward to meeting the girls Sat.
hmmm..none of my replies ever show up!!
Watch with making the kool-aid smell good, though. When I did that in my class, it smelled so good my Kindies ate it. You have to make sure they know not to eat it, as if they eat to much they may get sick.
Can you email me? I want to pick your brain about changing our request to older/siblings….I am freaking out a bit about doing it….
Claire
I was going to tell you about the koolaid too! It’s still a favorite with my older kids! The great thing about koolaid is that it turns your play dough into such vibrant colors, and the smell is wonderful! I’m glad you brought this topic to our attention -because now we’re definitely going to be making “smelly dough” as we call it, this week!
Love it!! we use the same recipe with the addition of essential oils for and extra sensory experience….purple=lavender, orange=bergamot, blue=eucalyptus etc. every once in a while the kids will declare the need for sparkles or some such thing. So FUN!!
Looks like you guys are having fun! Orange and pink were our kids hardest to learn colours.
We use that recipe too and, if you put it in a plastic container (old margarine container or tupperware or something) you can keep it out of the fridge and it doesn’t turn hard.
Hi to the girls from E and B!