Play Dough and Cloud Dough
Play dough
The first was play dough, which turned out to be super easy and so much better than the stuff you buy. You can find the recipe here.The only thing I would say is that I added my food coloring after the dough was made and separated; it worked great.
Easy ingredients I already had in my pantry
Pretty colors, basic enough for Anaya to recognize and learn from
Play time!
Fun times.
And since we don't have all the fanciness from the States to work with, here are a few examples of the items we played with/pressed in the dough... a.k.a. random items I found around the house. (I realized I don't even have any cookie cutters! Ha!)
Anaya is so young, so I am really having to model imaginative play. (Examples: Rolling out a snake and making it hiss. Making a circle and calling it a pizza as we decorate it, and then slice it. Rolling up three balls and making a snowman.) She has caught on quick, however, and is starting to come up with some of her own ideas. It is fun to watch.
Cloud Dough
Cloud dough is crumbly, yet moldable dough, resembling wet sand, but much softer and nice to play with.
I sort of adapted my own recipe here. It is 4 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil. For the 1 cup of oil, I used this 50ml bottle of baby oil and then filled the rest of the cup up with sunflower oil. (canola oil would work) Some recipes use only baby oil, but I didn't have enough. You could also make it with just sunflower oil, though the baby oil kind of smells nice. If you have more than 1 child playing, you might want to double the recipe.
I wanted to play inside so that the dough would easily stay clean enough to put in a ziplock and use again, so I put down our plastic floor mat that goes under the high chair to catch spilled food. I had a vision of it being contained and neat, though that flew out the door in a matter of seconds. It stayed mainly on the mat... and then some all over the living room. I like these times to be fun though and not disciplinary, so I tried to embrace my inner messy side. I did pretty well! And guess what? It only took about 5 minutes to sweep and clean it up. Totally worth it. This dough is not sticky at all and super easy to just brush up. I will warn, however, I did just put Anaya right in the bath tub, as it seemed the easiest.
Again, simple ingredients I already had.
Anaya cooking with her dough
Our 'cake' made form my silicone cupcake holder
Anaya is a little slow to dive in, but by the end she was dumping it all over herself. =)
So fun! I saved our dough in a big ziplock, and I think we'll be able to use it a few more times. What a fun morning. It was like being at the beach, but in our living room! Awesome!
August 25, 2012 at 6:16 PM
Awesome! Sand castles can be made in the comfort of your home? Who knew???
I want to try this one :-)