Home Made Play Dough Recipe

A simple home made play dough recipe is perfect for keeping the kids busy on a rainy day. They can create all sorts of colours by adding ordinary food colouring,
explore interesting scents by mixing in herbs or cocoa powder or go all disco and shake in some glitter!

Teaching your kids how to make play dough is a brilliant, inexpensive activity that really gives them a chance to be involved in the creative process from the very start. Following a play dough recipe is also a wonderful opportunity to introduce a little bit of maths and science to your craft sessions.

Let your kids use the scales to weigh out the play dough ingredients, and don't worry if they get their measures wrong first time. Adding more flour to the pile or spooning some back off is a great way for them to practice adding and subtracting, and to build their confidence with numbers.

When you start to mix the flour together with the other bits and bobs, encourage your kids to notice how the ingredients behave.

What happens when the wet and dry ingredients are mixed? How does the food colouring effect the mixture? What can they see happening when the play dough is warmed?

Keep it fun and let the kids lead the activity as much as you can. They will be learning all sorts without even realising it's happening!

How to make play dough

There are a couple of different ways to make your own play doh. The no-cook recipe below is safe and easy for very young children to produce. Further down you'll find a cooked play dough recipe which involves warming the ingredients in a saucepan to produce a smoother longer-lasting dough. This will be more satisfying for older children to create and work with.

So get yourselves in the kitchen, grab your favorite recipe for play dough and don't worry about the mess!

No-cook play dough recipe

Ingredients:

How to make:

1. Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl.
2. Add the water and oil.
3. Mix together with a wooden spoon and then knead your dough by hand until it is smooth.
4. Add a splash more water or a sprinkle more flour if the mixture seems to wet or too dry.

Variations

• You could try adding a tablespoon of hand lotion to your mixture. This will give your home made play dough a lovely smell and make it even more pliable.
  
  
• If you want to colour your homemade play dough you can either add a few drops of food colouring to the water, or knead some colouring into the finished dough.
  
  
• It will be interesting for the kids to try out both ways and then decide for themselves which they prefer.
  
  
• Other additions to the play dough recipe which my kids have tried out include flower petals, table confetti, glitter, dried herbs and hundreds and thousands.

Cooked recipe for play dough

Ingredients:

How to make:

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a large saucepan.
2. Place the saucepan over a low heat and warm the mixture, stirring all the time until it thickens to from a lump of dough.
3. Remove from the heat and knead your dough by hand as it cools.
4. If you wrap the dough in cling film/food wrap and store it in the fridge, it will stay fresh for a couple of weeks.

Variations

• Just the same as for the un-cooked play dough recipe, you can add all sorts of bits and bobs to your mixture to add smells, colour or texture.
  
  
• Why don't you try some ingredients of your own and then let me know so I can add it to this page?
  
  
• Remember though that if you intend to keep your home made play dough for a few weeks don't use anything that will go mouldy too quickly!