Play Dough Time!

Little Miss Amara has been having a rough few days. I decided she needed something new to shake her out of her funk. On Pinterest, I ran across a pin for homemade play dough that claimed to be the best recipe out there. I was going to hold off and do it for her art station that she is getting for her birthday, but it seemed like she needed it now rather than later. It'll just get added to the station when I get it all set up in January.

The recipe was mostly things I had on hand. We only had to buy 2 items when we did our grocery shopping earlier in the week (the cream of tartar, and food coloring). It ended up being less expensive than buying the brand name Play Doh too.

The recipe:
1 cup flour (used all purpose)
1 cup water (we had the lower sodium salt and it was fine)
1/4 cup salt
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Food coloring (or sugar free kool aid packets and it needs to be sugar free or the dough will be sticky)
Any add-ins like sparkles or maybe small confetti pieces (the plastic type, not paper)

Ingredients all gathered at our table. 

Dump it all in!

 Add all the ingredients to your nonstick pot. Doesn't matter what order. I measured them out and then let Amara dump.

Mix it all up!

Then stir it all up until it is mostly clump free. I let her stir, and then stirred it a little myself to make sure no clumps of flour were hiding. 

Then take it to the stove and heat it up over medium heat. You need to stir it constantly so it does not burn. I did not let Amara help with this step since we are still working on stove is hot, don't touch. I also didn't have anything she could safely stand on to reach. 

As you stir, it will start to form clumps.

The clumps will get larger.

Keep going until it all sticks to your spoon in one large clump.

Next, take it back to your flat working surface. You'll need to knead the dough until it's the right consistency and cooled. Don't worry if it still feels sticky at this point. As you knead it, that stickiness will go away. Also, it will be hot at first for little hands. An adult should start kneading until it's cool enough for the child to help knead.

The instructions online called to add the color and add-ins when you first mixed all the ingredients together. I did not want large quantities of just one color though. I decided we'd knead the colors in at this point. The first batch, I broke in half. I made the first half yellow. Then broke it in half again and added red to make orange. Then we did just a few drops of red on the other half of the white dough to get pink. I broke the pink in half, and added blue to make purple. 

 

I made a little hole, put the coloring in, and then folded it in (adding more drops if needed to get the intensity I wanted). My hands, for the most part, aren't rainbow colored.

Then we made another batch. On the way to the stove, I tripped over the chair leg. Thankfully only about a 1/4 of it spilled, so we went on with the instructions above and was fine. It cleaned up easily though.

Uh oh, Mama! MESS!

Then she realized her cup was a victim...

This batch we only got 3 colors. I made red, green, and blue, so no color mixing needed this round. 

Checking out all 7 colors.

Apparently, this recipe will last for up to 6 months if you keep it stored properly. I put each color in a ziplock bag, and then all 7 baggies into a plastic container. The recipe is safe to eat (although I'm sure it is not tasty). It produced a very soft dough. The brand name kind they've been using at play group recently has been too hard for Amara to be able to squish. This was very easy for her to mold, smash, flatten, roll up or whatever else. 

Time to play!