Monday, May 17, 2010

Play Dough

After working with kids for the past 20 years Ive made my fair share of play dough. Its one of those simple, timeless activities that will provide hours of fun for the kids (and kids at heart!)


Most of the recipes for good play dough are cooked in a saucepan on the stove - its messy, and you end up with an arm ache. For as long as I can remember Ive been making play dough using boiling water rather than cooking it on the stove. I find it works just as well, keeps just as well, and doesn't leave you with a clean up job that makes you think twice about making the dough in the first place. Here is how its done.

You will need...

2 cups plain flour
4 Tablespoons Cream of tartar
2 Tablespoons cooking oil
1 cup salt
2 cups water
food colouring

Add the flour, Cream of Tartar, cooking oil, and salt to a bowl. Add the two cups of boiling water and mix until it comes together. Tip on to a lightly floured bench and knead until you have a gorgeous smooth dough (this only takes a minute)
To colour the dough you can either add some food colouring to the water before you add it, or if you want more than one colour from a batch, divide it up and add a little colouring to each piece and knead it through (be warned this is the messy option!)

Today we choose to make four colours - pink, purple, yellow, blue and green, and the kids are sitting having a wonderful time with it.


If you have toddlers, making a lovely rainbow of colours is purely for Mummy's sake - mixing the colours up is half the fun, it will most likely look like this with in minutes!


At four, Isaac is much more interested in having a lump of dough and seeing what he can make with it.

3 comments:

Becky said...

A good and simple recipe, thank for sharing :)

Ruth said...

I use that recipe too Nic. It's great and never fails. You make pretty colours!

Jess @ Scrappy n Happy said...

I just made your recipe and the boys are happily playing with green playdough as I write this! Thank you for showing me how to do it without a saucepan, it was too easy!