PLAY DOUGH!
I made a few batches of homemade play dough today for the kids to play with this summer. The girl is having a friend spend the night tomorrow night, so i though it would be good to have it ready for them. The recipe i used is a pretty common one floating around the internet and i have seen it in a few books for kids’ activities.
you will need:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup warm water
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 TBSP oil (i used veggie oil)
mix everything in a saucepan and heat over low heat stirring constantly. It will slowly thicken and turn into dough. You can either tint the whole batch one color using liquid food coloring while you heat it, or you can make a plain batch and knead it in after it’s cooled a bit. It needs to cook long enough that it will form a ball in the pan as you stir it around. If it is too sticky to knead when you take it out of the pan, you need to pop it back in the pan and heat it longer. once it has cooked long enough, plop it out on the counter to cool a bit. You want it to be cool enough to knead it to make sure it’s smooth and not sticky. I kneaded it a few times to make sure it was smooth, then I covered it with plastic wrap and left it on the counter to finish cooling. It’s ready to play with once it is cooled. Store it in a plastic container to keep it from drying out. My plastic containers are a little big for each batch of dough, so I am covering the dough with plastic wrap and then putting the lid on the container.
It’s nontoxic dough since it’s basically flour, water and salt. But it is NOT an edible dough. If your little one eats a hunk of it, they may end up with a tummy ache from the salt.
If you want to add the coloring to the dough after cooking it, roll the cooled dough into a ball. Make a well in the middle of the ball and add a few drops of coloring to it. pinch the dough over the coloring and carefully begin to knead the dough. carefully because you don’t want to squirt food coloring every where. I’m not sure how much coloring you can add this way, so I don’t know if it is possible to add too much. so just start with a few drops and add a few at a time. I have a batch of plain dough to try this with, but it is still cooling.