Homemade Playdough

My children love homemade playdough!

 You can find the recipe here, and some great tips for enjoying it here at counting coconuts   , here at 1+1+1=1, and here and here at Living Montessori Now. That's just a few to scrape the surface of the many great things you can use playdough for. We have a great way to keep our playdough, and I hope to get that post up soon.

 Since I was making some new balls of dough today, I figured I would just take a few pictures and make a 'pictorial' of sorts :)   
                                  
                                   Gather your ingredients
                                         
                            
                                           
                                          1 cup flour


                                                       

                                       1/2 cup salt


                                                            

                                           1 tbsp oil


                                                       

                                   1 tbsp cream of tartar


                                                             

                                              1 cup water


                                     
                      Your choice of color/flavor varieties 
  
 * I used kool-aid packets this time, in lemon-lime, strawberry, lemonade, and a berry flavor, to have green, yellow, red, and blue play dough. You can use a variety of different things here - I have used extracts and food dyes, jello gelatin mixes, drink mixes from large containers, and kool aid mixes. I prefer to mix in the drink mixes or jello mixes simply because you just toss it in when you mix everything, and it cooks right in without any more fuss. I did add a little food coloring to the yellow, as the lemonade mix just turned the playdough a light peachy color and not the yellow I was hoping for, and green to make the green slightly darker. I would suggest adding the food coloring before cooking, simply because you don't have to get it all over your hands if you do it this way.    


Mix all ingredients, first dry, then wet, and stir in a bowl until smooth. Pour in to your choice of pan (I used a 10 inch saucepan, I believe), and stir CONSTANTLY on medium-low heat. The mix will quickly start to look like it is clumping up in a few places, and as you stir, the clump will grow together. When the mix begins to pull away from the pan and gets a dry look to it for the most part, turn it onto a countertop or table top and knead into a smooth ball of dough. It will be warm, but not so warm that you can't work with it. If you find that it is still a little sticky after beginning to knead it, add a little flour. If you feel that it is a little dry (as mine has sometimes been after cooling off) and looks like it has a cracked exterior, just wet your hands with a little water and knead the dough in your hands. It will moisten it to where it should be. The end result should look something like this:   

                            

                          A nice, smooth ball of play dough! 


                             
                      You can also add some fun glitter! 
                     This particular time I added gold glitter to the yellow
                      and silver glitter to the green.




Last, but not least, ENJOY! 




Comments

  1. Janis CoxMarch 23, 2013 at 5:40 PM

    I just love playdough - one of my favourite crafts.
    Linking in from Teach Beside Me.
    Blessings,
    Janis

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amy @ No Greater HonorsMarch 23, 2013 at 9:04 PM

      Thanks, Janis! My children love it, but I never did like spending money for store bought playdoh that always tended to dry up faster than I wanted to. The last time I made some, we had to throw it away at almost a month old, but not because the play dough was bad - rather because someone decided to play with it on the floor where there were crumbs and it just seemed too gross to keep it! Thanks for stopping by :)

      Delete
  2. UnknownMarch 26, 2013 at 10:04 AM

    Thanks for sharing this helpful breakdown of homemade playdough. It makes it seem fun and easy!

    http://trilliummontessori.org/learning-about-australia/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amy @ No Greater HonorsMarch 26, 2013 at 1:25 PM

      Thank you Seemi! It truly is SOO easy! I sat on the idea of making it homemade for so long, because I thought it would be hard, but it took less than 10 minutes to make the first ball of playdough, and I made four in about 30 minutes - five, if you count the batch I made when I forgot the salt!!!

      Delete

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