Plenty of Playdough!

There are a million playdough recipes out there, but I have to plug one that Wesley and I have been using a lot lately. This recipe calls for a little bit of cooking, but the benefit is that the final result does not have to be refrigerated. Also, I found that making our own playdough has allowed me to relax about mixing the colors and ending up with a bunch of mottled brown stuff. Hey, we just make more! It's also a fun way for kids to learn about which primary colors can mix together to make new colors (though, be aware - blue and red may not make purple. In my case, they made grey). Not to mention, this is WAY cheaper than the store bought stuff.

Most of the ingredients should be in your kitchen, or easy to find on your next Target or grocery store trip.

You'll need: 1 cup white flour, 1/2 cup salt, 2 tablespoons cream of tartar (look in the spice aisle), 1 tablespoon oil, 1 cup of water (not shown), and food colors. My recipe (courtesy of a local pre-school art teacher) also says that you can add extracts for scent. However, we haven't tried this because, a) playdough is already tempting enough to eat, and b) I suspect many of my extracts could be harmful to skin. But, if you have some cheap vanilla or almond extract and want to try it out, add it in when you mix in the food colors.

First, find your favorite helper to add all of the dry ingredients to a pot.

Little ones can dump ingredients in...

pour salt into a cup, and do a lot of stirring.

Once you have your dry ingredients in, add your oil, give it a stir and then add the water. Stir it up so it's not too lumpy. You'll be doing a lot of stirring when you add the colors, so don't stress too much about the lumps at this point (but, you'll want it relatively lump-free when you turn on the heat).



Now for the fun part - adding colors. In my experience, you'll need lots of color to get it as dark as you want. It will darken a bit once heated, but don't worry about putting in too much color. Let the kids go wild! (In fact, I'd recommend letting them add whatever colors they want, even if it ends up being a nasty brown. They'll learn a lot about colors, and it will be much more fun for all of you. If you're dying to have a nice pure blue, make up a batch during naptime. Now is not the time to be controlling.)


Now for the strictly mama part - turn the heat on to medium and start stirring. You'll want to stir continuously for 3-5 minutes. The playdough will quickly go from something that looks like weird pancake batter to...

something that looks like slime from "You Can't Do That on Television," to...



something that looks like really lumpy, sticky mashed potatoes, to...


something that looks like it was thrown up by a dog, to...



something that looks like playdough!





Turn it out and knead it for about 5 minutes. It will be very hot, so make sure little hands are patient.



Now all that you need to do is find some cookie cutters, a butter knife and some other random household objects to mash into your newly created playdough. Have fun!

Have any fun play doh recipes or crafts to share? Post them in the comments!