The moment I came across Kate’s printable people play dough mats on Pickelbums, I knew that they’d bring us hours of fun. We loooove play dough, and pairing it with a mat and loose parts makes it even better.
Tag Archives: play dough fun
Lemony Play Dough
Oh how I adore lemons! We bought a ton of them last week in order to make a big batch of our favourite homemade cleaner and some chia lemonade, but only really needed the juice of the lemons for both projects. It seemed sort of sad to let all of those rinds go to waste, so I zested them before getting to the juicing part and set the zest aside for later, knowing that I’d come up with some sort of plan for it. Well, we could have made our yummy lemon poppyseed pancakes or some lemon cookies or muffins, but what did we make? Why lemony play dough of course! {Does that surprise you??}
Super Simple No-Cook Chocolate Play Dough
Gracen’s been loving the tiny build a snowman play dough kit we brought with us so much this trip that I decided it was time to make a full batch for her to enjoy during our downtime at the apartment. I gave her some options, and she decided that chocolate play dough was the way to go. {Mmm… A girl after my own heart!} The only challenge while on vacation, of course, is not having a fully-stocked kitchen. Based on our favourite ever no-cook play dough recipe, I popped some ingredients onto our grocery list and hoped for the best. Relying on my limited French to read the German labels at our local market, I searched the aisles for cream of tartar and glycerine without any luck. I’m sure I could have gone elsewhere and eventually found what I was looking for, but I thought to myself, why? Back in the old days when I was babysitting or nannying at least 5 days a week, I relied solely on one from-memory play dough recipe {quite possibly the simplest recipe ever}, which consisted of three ingredients – flour, salt, and water. That’s it. And while it didn’t yield the stretchiest, softest, shiniest, last-for-at-least-6-months sort of dough, it was fun to play with and the kids loved it nonetheless. So back to the basics it was. And you know what? Our super simple no-cook chocolate play dough turned out great! In the words of Grae, it’s ‘so SO soft’ and ‘smells DE-licious!’
Homemade Play Dough Kit {A Simple and Fun Gift}
Now I know it’s good for kids to learn that they don’t always get something when someone else does, but I still really enjoy bringing a small and simple ‘sibling gift’ when Miss G and I attend one of her friends’ birthday parties. Most of the time it’s something handmade and useful or consumable – meaning not just another little plastic toy to add to the heap – so I don’t feel bad about gifting it.
Created by Gracen: Animal Dough Disguises
Play dough is an everyday thing in our house. Grae is free to use the bin of tools and dough we keep in the main living space of our home at any time and she also has a smaller set in her bedroom to use during quiet play time too.
Caramel Apple Pie Play Dough
One day, while playing with our well-loved pumpkin spice play dough, Gracen asked if we could have some friends over so she could share her new dough with them. She’s always adored having friends come over, and now that we’re in an apartment building filled with teaching families, arranging play dates is easier than ever. A play dough play date sounded like a brilliant plan to me, so I agreed and immediately started thinking about another fall-scented play dough we could create. I quickly remembered the apple play dough post I’d seen on Fantastic Fun & Learning, and knew that Miss G and her friends would enjoy something similar. Because I was on a bit of a roll with the dough containing real pumpkin, I decided our apple dough would contain real apples and would be further fall-ified by making it apple pie scented. The good news is that my mission was a total success! The dough turned out soft, squishy, and smelled deliciously of warm apple pie drizzled with caramel sauce – yum! In fact, as I was making it, Brad came into the kitchen with eager eyes and asked what I was baking because our house smelled so delicious. Oops.
AMAZING Pumpkin Spice Play Dough
I adore fall. The colours, the crisp air, the scarves, the boots, the crunch of leaves underneath your feet… It all just makes me warm and fuzzy inside. My social media feeds have been full of it recently, and for that I’m thankful (because hey – I’ll take it however I can get it). While we may be in the desert and it may still be 40 to 45 degrees on an average day, there’s no reason why we can’t make fall happen right here in our own apartment. And so we began today.
The PERFECT Peanut Butter Play Dough
Is it crazy that I’m totally stoked on this awesome, non-crumbly, and fully edible peanut butter play dough we came up with today?! The truth is, it’s taken us a few attempts to come up with the perfect recipe. I really should have known which ingredient would be the key to our success – it’s a long time favourite of mine – but it took us a while to get there. We started with the classic recipe I grew up with – peanut butter, dried milk, and honey – and while it’s yummy and fun to play with, it crumbles absolutely everywhere and is super tricky to roll out and cut using cookie cutters. This one, on the other hand, is like pure luxury. It’s super soft, silky, and rolls and cuts with ease.
Strengthening Scissor Skills with Play Dough
One of the things I’ve always loved doing with students who’ve found using scissors challenging is pairing them with play dough instead of paper. Let’s face it – learning to use scissors properly is tricky! First there’s figuring out which fingers go where, plus there’s finding the hand strength and coordination to open and close them, and then there’s also guiding them in the direction you want them to go… Certainly no easy task! The reason I love play dough is that although many kids come to Kindergarten not all that familiar with using ‘school tools’ like scissors, almost all kids come to school having played with play dough. And not only are they familiar with it, but they love it. And because it’s fun and non-intimidating, plus soft and easy to cut, it’s a perfect starting point, even for reluctant munchkins.
I’ve done this activity with Gracen many times, and although she’s already very comfortable using scissors with paper and cutting on pre-determined lines, she still loves cutting play dough. It’s an easy activity to put together and I’d rather smush together bits of play dough than pick up tiny shards of paper any day of the week. When I set it up, I usually create both play dough ‘pancakes’ and ‘worms’ and then let her go to town, but anything goes. Today after quickly preparing the play dough shapes, she used them to create a daisy and a stem. ☺
Then it was time to cut!
Two things I like to reinforce during the cutting process are one, being mindful of where your ‘holding fingers’ are and two, positioning your scissors so they’re pointing away from your body.
During the process Grae almost always asks for a bowl to put her ‘food’ in, which makes the activity that much more fun and adds in an element of pretend play.
Today’s food was for kitties only. ☺
♥
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Berry Jello Play Dough
A couple of days ago, Miss G and I experimented with making a couple of changes to our scented Kool-Aid play dough. I don’t know if Kool-Aid is just on the way out (surely it should be ☺), but our grocery store only stocks a few colours. So as an alternative, we decided to give Jell-O crystals a shot.
We followed our original scented play dough recipe *almost* exactly, but added a packet of Jell-O mix instead of Kool-Aid mix.
We also added some fine glitter because…. Well, because Grae said so. That’s why.
We mixed everything up and added our wet ingredients, going a little bit easier on the water this time. While we absolutely loved our Kool-Aid play dough and it kept great when somewhere cool, we did notice that it got a bit mucky when stored in a cupboard near one of our heat vents, so hopefully the reduced amount of water will help fix this problem.
The result was a soft, smooth, yummy-smelling play dough that Miss G was just dying to get her hands on.
We made two batches, one raspberry, one strawberry, and added some cookie cutters, a mini rolling pin, and a mini baking pan for a fun creative table set-up.
{No-Cook} Berry Jell-O Play Dough
- 1 cup of all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup of table salt
- 1 packet of Jell-O (we used the sugar kind)
- 1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon of glitter (if desired)
- 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon of glycerine (optional and readily available in the first aid section of most grocery stores)
- 3/4 of a cup of boiling water
Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Add wet ingredients, saving the boiling water for last. Add the water and give the mixture a few quick mixes, banging off your whisk every once and a while. Leave the semi-mixed dough on the counter to cool. Once cooled for about 10 minutes, dump the mixture onto the counter and knead really well. Knead for about 3 minutes, or until the dough smooth and well-blended.
Enjoy!
♥
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Morning Play Dough
Gracen is absolutely loving hanging out with her cousins. We woke up this morning, had some breakfast, and pulled out our play dough gingerbread people supplies for the kids to play with. In addition to the original supplies, this time we added some miniature baking pans, tiny rolling pins, and more cookie cutters to the mix.
All of the kids really enjoyed creating their play dough masterpieces and the activity provided a great start to our day.
♥
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Play Dough Gingerbread People
After decorating gingerbread houses this morning, this afternoon I whipped up a batch of delicious-smelling and amazingly soft gingerbread play dough for Miss G to play with.
In addition to the play dough, I set out several things create gingerbread people with, including a rolling pin, cookie cutters, buttons, straw pieces, jingle bells, ribbon bits, and toothpicks.
Gracen dove in as she usually does and the play dough gingerbread people began rolling out of the kitchen.
She came up with so many fun ways to decorate them, some more traditional, and some a little more abstract…
The best part is that this dough smells so amazing that you sometimes forget that it’s just play dough and not actual gingerbread baking in the oven. ☺
♥
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