On Sunday afternoon while waiting for friends to come by for dinner, Annabelle and I were searching for something fun to do. Having Montessori on my mind (I’d been reading up on ideal set-ups for 18 month to 36 month olds and realized I needed to add more art supplies), I suggested we make a batch of homemade play dough, similar to this recipe. We opted for the no-cook version using just flour, water, and salt, and then added food coloring and vanilla for color and a pretty scent (vanilla behaves as a preservative too). Annabelle practiced pouring and scooping to help make the play dough, and then smooshed the dough with me until it achieved a good consistency. Here’s how we created our play dough:
Recipe
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup water (at least! We used about 3/4 cups to get a malleable dough)
Annabelle scooping the flour while waiting to add the salt.
Annabelle scooping the waterless flour and salt. We added water afterwards.
Annabelle rubbing food coloring into the dough.
Our play dough turned out to be as much fun as the store bought kind and looked pretty groovy, almost like tye-dye since we mixed our pink and purple dough into one large ball. Annabelle created worms, a princess crown, and items of jewelry (with my help of course!) from her dough and we stored it in an old butter container.
This is a great sensory activity for pre-pre-schoolers and encourages practical living skills like measuring, pouring, scooping, and kneading.
{ 2 comments }
Thanks so much for posting this. I have been wanting to make some playdough…does the food coloring stain? We will making this one tonight!
The food coloring did not stain, although I used tablecloth and washed up colored hand prints after we finished making the dough. So far I have not seen the dough itself leaving any stains.
Another great activity that I may link to later is creating tie dye coffee filters using water color paints and droppers. It looks like a lot of fun.
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