When you have little ones it is a good idea to have activities that are safe for them to be involved in and that offer lots of fun. I have never been big on toys. My kids never seem to like them much. We rarely find toys that they just play with over and over. They do however, love art and will occupy themselves with drawing, coloring and painting for large chucks of time. I love creative play like this.
When my son was almost 2 years old I made him some play dough. He would sit at the table with cookie cutters and a butter knife and mold all sorts of objects. There is so much to learn from playing with play dough, such as the different colors you get when you mix colors. I recently made a large batch of play dough and colored it green, pink and orange. The colors were so beautiful and the texture of homemade play dough is so much nicer than store bought. It is also non-toxic, which is important and if anyone tastes it they wouldn’t want a second helping. It tastes terrible. The kids made all kinds of meals with the colors I gave them. They had peas, carrots and ham. The food actually looked real.
If you want to inspire some creative play for your little ones try making some play dough. It is fast and easy to make. To store it place it in a ziploc bag and refrigerate.
Homemade Play Dough Recipe
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tsp. cream of tarter
1 1/4 Tbsp. oil
Food coloring
Mix color and water, add oil and mix everything together in a pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until it forms a ball. Knead till pliable.
For Christmas we are using cinnamon play dough. We love making ornaments wiht this and hanging them up on the tree. There are tons of different spices you can add to make the playdough scented. We use playdough all the time and the older kids actually help make it.
Hi everyone! I’m new member here… It’s a good idea for making homemade play dough…it’s safe and at the same time they can do play n learn… Hey, I have another idea how to create safe playdough for our baby…we also can use gelatinuous rice flour + water + food coloring… This gelatinuous rice flour can be found in asean store… But i’ve 1 question…is that okay if I let my 9 month++ daughter to play with playdough…since she now like to put everything she found inside her mouth…!!
I just looked online and it said that the cream of tarter is optional for improved elasticity. So you can leave it out. I am not sure about adding the color later. It seems that it would be hard to mix it in thoroughly if you don’t do it in the liquid step.
I have tried adding liquid food coloring after it was made, it was a huge mess. The food coloring did eventually mix in but my hands and clothes were stained in the process. Concentrated food coloring is hard to clean up, but I guess if you are prepared it would be a nice option. I would suggest a mixer with a dough hook, if you have it, to keep the mess contained. If not wear clothes you don’t mind staining and rubber gloves (unless you don’t mind having colorful hands for a couple days.) The play dough texture improves the more it is worked so that part wouldn’t be any problem.
Another alternative would be to mix up several colors and store them in an airtight container in the fridge. But this would require enough space in your fridge to store so much stuff. The play dough lasts a long time as long as it doesn’t get dirty, wet or dried out. The salt in it keeps germs and mold from taking over. I have also heard that the cream of tartar helps it last longer, we have used it for up to 3 months before it got too dirty.
Yesterday I tried your dough recipe and it became amazing. (before reading these replies !)
I added baking powder as a substitute of cream of tartar
I read somewhere that baking powder is substitute for (cream of tartar + baking soda).
My daughter loved playing with dough. I prepared pink dough. And added color before cooking.
Next time will try adding color at the last.
The link is also has many good tips.
Thanks for sharing it.
Twinergy & TmS thanks for sharing your experience.
I’ll be more prepared now before adding colors after cooking to play dough.
Yeah. Play dough can be so much fun. My little boy would play for almost 2 hours with it. I would give him a plastic knife and a rolling pin and other utensils and he would sit and makes stuff. I love creative, independent play. Now you have to make more colors, but be prepared for mixing. It always happens.
You know in Egypt we have something like this, in the beginning of Spring Season we get a lot of eggs and food colors or decorative stickers & let children draw on eggs & decorate them with the stickers. They may draw faces of cartoon characters like those of (Monster’s Company :ph34r: , Disney characters …etc). :clown:
it is so nice idea for now, we’ve made it yesteday: http://flaviolandia.blogspot.com/2010/12/playdoh-alla-cannella-fatto.html
I was thinking to make some parts of letters with it to assemble, what do you think? (and mather of faith: I’m not ready with my all-library links I’m sorry, almost done for sure)
ed
