let’s play with dough..

I love playdough, especially the homemade variety. It’s relatively cheap and lasts a long time and gives hours of fun and creativity.

You can make characters from Bible stories with it, add it to laminated print outs, make shapes – anything. It’s great for young children to practice their fine motor skills and exercise their hand muscles ready for writing and drawing. It’s also good for keeping children focused on a sustained activity – they often willingly concentrate on playdough for quite a while.

The above playdough is a no cook recipe – it uses boiling water so has to be made by an adult.

Recipe

1 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

1 teaspoon cream of tarter

1 tablespoon vegetable oil (don’t use a nut oil in case children are allergic)

3/4 cup boiling water

Food colouring paste or ready mix water colour paint for colour

To make add all the dry ingredients to a mixer and then add the oil, boiling water and colouring and mix till a soft dough.

I tripled this amount to make the different colours in the picture.

I added some vanilla extract but I’m not sure it’s worth it – I think you would have to add a lot to really notice a vanilla scent and that would be quite expensive.

I had a play with the dough – a simple tree laminated – here’s a free tree PDF Tree I made an autumnal tree and an apple tree.