via familyeducation: Everyone seems to have a favorite playdough recipe, and many old favorites have been included here. Some require cooking and some don’t; some are meant to be eaten and some are not. Choose the recipe that best suits your needs and the ingredients you have on hand. Store playdough in a covered container or Ziploc bag. If it sweats a little, just add more flour. For sensory variety, use playdough warm or cool as well as at room temperature.

Colored Playdough

Materials

  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup salt
  • 1 tablespoon cream of tartar
  • Food coloring
  • Saucepan
  • 1 cup flour

Directions

  1. Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a saucepan and heat until warm.
  2. Remove from heat and add flour.
  3. Stir, then knead until smooth. The cream of tartar makes this dough last 6 months or longer, so resist the temptation to omit this ingredient if you don’t have it on hand.
  4. Store this dough in an airtight container or a Ziploc freezer bag.

via the imagination treeAfter we made the natural food colouring this week I wanted to try out using the blueberry one to dye some homemade playdough. It turned out a beautiful raspberry pink colour and smelt lovely and fruity!

We added some red glitter to make it sparkly and even more appealing. We have a bit of a thing for glitter, as you may have noticed!

They made some blueberry pancakes in a little pan and chopped them up with a (blunt) pizza cutter.

And then they set to work decorating them with beads, buttons and gems. Delicious!

I had to really fiddle with the recipe to make sure it wasn’t too sticky because of using a fruit juice-based colouring. These are the quantities I ended up with, which seemed to work well eventually!

  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 1/4 cup blueberry colouring topped up to a full cup with boiling water (so 1 cup liquid altogether)
  • 3/4 cup of salt
  • 1.5 tablespoons of oil
  • 1/2 tablespoon cream of tartar

Mix together vigorously and then knead until all lumps have gone. This should take a few minutes. If too sticky add a little more flour, 1/4 of a cup at a time. If too dry add another teaspoon of oil. Experiment!

Learning Links:

  • Sensory: exploring textures using fingers and scents using nose. Describe sticky/ dry/ liquid/ solid
  • Motor skills: develop fine motor skills by pinching, squeezing, rolling, squashing, flattening
  • Creativity: pretend and role play scenarios eg bakery, sweet shop, pizzas, pancakes. Using one tool to represent another in imaginary play. Decorating using beads and sparkles
  • Knowledge & Understanding (Science): Mixing ingredients together, observing change of state of materials, predicting outcomes, experimenting outcomes of adding more flour/water, talking about real cooking ingredients and tools
  • Maths: counting out cup fulls, measuring and quantities, capacity- full, empty and half full
  • PSHE: working independently and also collaboratively to achieve an outcome, cooperation, sustaining involvement in a self-chosen project/ activity