PlAYdough! PlAYdough! PlAYdough!
Playdough is one of our FAVORITE things to do, both at school and at home! We have a fail-safe, no-cook recipe that is just magic. Here’s the thing. Playdough recipes are basically all the same. Just like pie crust, its getting a feel for it and doing it over and over that realllllly dials in your playdough making skills. I’ve also written this recipe in a SUPER kid-friendly way, with the goal being that your child can help you with the making of it too!
Step 1: Assemble your tools
You will need:
1/2 cup measuring scoop. Specifically a 1/2 cup scoop, because if you want to minimize dishes and maximize helping, this is how you do that with only ONE dirty scoop and it adds EVEN MORE MATH to this conversation already. I’m calling this ‘one scoop.’
1 Tablespoon scoop. Again, specifically this size. I’m calling this ‘one spoonful.’
1 large bowl
1 large non-wooden spoon (or else all of the dough just sticks to the spoon like glue… like seized cheese even worse…)
Step 2: Assemble your ingredients
Don’t let me confuse you here with this list of ingredients. Just make sure you have enough of each one but DON’T MEASURE IT YET. Do that part in step 3. For now, just make sure you have at least:
2.5 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2T cream of tartar
2T cooking oil
1.5 cups boiling hot liquid (water or tea!)
Any desired dry spices
Any desired liquid oils/scents/colors
1 cute lil kid
Step 3: Make it with your child
In a large bowl, scoop out 4 scoops flour and 1 scoop salt, 2 spoonfuls cream of tartar, and 2 spoonfuls vegetable oil. Add any dry spices now, and stir until its all evenly mixed.
In a separate, heat-proof container, heat up 1.5 cups of water to boiling. Once it’s done, add any colors and liquid scents to the liquid here. In order for the playdough to actually work, the water needs to be hot enough and plentiful enough to fully dissolve the salt. Add in 3 scoops of this to the dry ingredients (1.5 cups)
HERE’S THE SECRET STEP! Add the full 1.5 cups of liquid, and it will still be super-duper sticky and wild. (This is pure delight for a young child, don’t stress about the mess!) Stir and knead it with your very sticky hands until it cools a little, then slowly SLOWLY add one or two handfuls at a time of flour into the mix. The key here is to get the salt all melted and evenly distributed and re-cooled and THEN get it the right texture. It will harden up a lot as it cools, don’t make it over-dry or crumbly by rushing this step.
Pro Tip: Don’t use anything with a sugar base for this, or it will get sticky and you’re in ant/mold city, baby!
Step 4: playplayplay
Some pro-tips: Give your kid all of it at once! We are so used to the teeensy tiny amounts given in those delightful yellow tube-cans of ‘Pladoh’ that the idea of a whole mountain of it seems strange at first. BUT IT’S NOT IT’S JUST GLORIOUS. We put out a big plastic cutting board underneath it at home (mainly because The Kid loves using knives with his playdough most of all). Always mush it into one giant ball, then roll out into a log for storage (gotta reduce the surface area to reduce drying time), then roll all the air out of the bag and seal. To keep it extra super fresh put it in the fridge in between uses.
Playdough is pretty fun just as is, but we like to add a few kitchen tools to the mix too. I have fond memories of rifling through my grandmothers “mystery kitchen tools’ drawer, finding tools that haven’t seen the light of day since their purchase in 1972 and figuring out how they work while simultaneously cramming them full of playdough. Hard-boiled egg slicers, cherry pitters, jello molds…
…Maybe that’s why I love to cook so much today.
Want to download both the Playful Playdough Recipe and Play Starts ideas?
Final Thoughts: Playdough Rules
I could just leave you with some fun play ideas to ‘occupy your children’ while you attempt to work from home during this quarantine, but I promise that is NOT the goal here. Playdough is fully LOADED with learning - there’s a reason it’s a staple in preschool classrooms across the world! Here’s a quick developmental breakdown, using the “Developmentally Appropriate Practice” framework for you nerds like me:
This list is just the tip of the iceberg…. so are you a playdough convert yet?! IT REALLY IS THE BEST. Slap together a batch for your kids asap, and watch the magic unfold.
Enjoy your day, and more importantly, enjoy your kids!
-TiffAnY
PS - Need more inspiration? Want to share your ideas and pics of your fam enjoying the recipe? Follow us on Instagram @playfrontier, and tag your photos #playfrontierplaydough to get featured on the site!
