Monday 7 May 2012

Crafting with kids: homemade playdough

What do you do on a Bank Holiday weekend when outside the weather is miserable (in spite of the calendar blatantly lying by telling me it's May)? How do you keep your toddler entertained?
This morning, to answer these scary questions I thought: let's play with playdough!
I had bought a few months ago a tub of playdough, that Little Miss has played with perhaps  three or four times. I opened the tub this morning and the dough was rock hard. Mmmm...
I vaguely remembered seeing on Pinterest a website with homemade playdough recipes, so I quickly looked it up and there it was, a whole website full!
Playdoughrecipe.org has a variety of recipes from peanut butter to pumpkin pie dough, from glittery to chocolate dough but also the classic recipe that is natural enough for kids to play safely with, but doesn't smell too good (just in case they find it yummy!) or involve complex operations. You can find the recipe here.


The very basic cupboard ingredients (flour, cream of tartar, cooking oil, food colouring, salt, water) make it a super cheap, easy and fun project to do.
I involved Little Monkey in the preparation, asking her to mix the ingredients in a big bowl. I then put the mixture on the fire, which after briefly boiling, soon bunched up in a big ball.


 

I let it cool down away form the fire for a few minutes, then kneaded it a bit, and there it was, wonderfully soft and ready to play with. Best of all, if the dough is kept in an air-tight container in the fridge, it will last for a year!
My little one is almost two and, like any toddler, difficult to sit still for more than a few minutes: I am not exaggerating, she sat down playing with the dough for one and a half hours...we used cookie cutters and pens and any other everyday object we could find to give shape to the playdough, including making a mini-pizza in true Italian style!


Another plus of this easy craft project is that, by following the recipe's quantities, I ended up with lots of dough, which I divided in small food containers, ready to give as presents to Little Monkey's friends.
Can't think of any other craft project easier and more fun than this!



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