Best homemade playdough, easy, soft, safe and smells good

Play dough, almost all the kids love to play with it. It provides great stimulation and allows the children to get creative and imaginative. It is a good definition of Creative Play. They can use it to create objects of different shapes and forms. It gives a 3-D view of things and hence is very different from drawing or painting an object.  It can be a great game to teach some colors too.

Homemade Play dough can be molded into anything that a child wishes for with ease and this helps in building the child’s self confidence. Apart from all this it is a great tool for children to develop their fine motor skills.

 Fine motor skills can be defined as coordination of small muscle movements which occur e.g., while playing the piano or any musical instrument which is usually in coordination with the eyes. The abilities which involve the use of hands develop over time. Simple gestures of picking things or grabbing a cup come much earlier and easier than more precise activities which require better hand-eye coordination. The development of these fine skills helps a child to complete more complex and coordinated tasks such as writing, drawing, and buttoning.

Kids develop fine motor skills with playdough

During the infant and toddler years, children develop basic grasping and manipulation skills, which are refined during the preschool years. The preschooler becomes quite adept in self-help, construction, holding grips, and bimanual control tasks requiring the use of both hands – Essa, E., Young, R. & Lehne, L., Introduction to early childhood education, 2nd Ed. (1998)

Many of us may be aware of these advantages of letting children play with play dough, but safety has always been a concern. Everyone has read articles of the play dough containing harmful chemicals. Play dough is available in various colors and generally has a sweet smell (like sweet candies) and hence it is very tempting for children to taste or eat it. These are some obvious reasons that you
would keep playdough out of your kids toy box.

Here’s a simple recipe to make play dough at home with 100% edible ingredients (not that it tastes good). Making your own play dough is very easy with this play dough recipe so start right now and let your kids have all the fun!

The ingredients are simple, inexpensive and the ones that are normally there in every household. It hardly takes 10 minutes to make it and your little one can have fun for upto 4 months with it. This play dough is going to similar to the one you get in the store (the good quality ones are quite expensive tough) but you feel more safe with this because you know exactly what is in there. If this is consumed in very small quantities it might do no harm and you child may not be tempted to have more because it doesn’t taste so good after all. You can involve your child while making it for that extra fun they always look forward to.

A plastic activity table for kids is very useful during the preschool ages when children want to gets their hands messy with paints and homemade playdough while  trying to unleash their creativity in drawing, painting and playing with playdough. It is a good option during these years as it is easy to clean and less prone to scratches than wooden ones. Kids plastic activity table are a good choice for outdoor use also.

Kids plastic activity tables

How to make Play Dough? Here’s the recepie for homemade playdough

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 teaspoons Cream of Tartar

1 cup water

1 tablespoon cooking oil

7-8 drops of food coloring

 Step by Step Method

 Combine flour, salt and cream of tartar in a saucepan. In a bowl put water, oil and food color. Mix in the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir gradually until you get a smooth mixture.

Cook over medium heat until ingredients form a ball. This process almost automatically forms a ball of the dough on the stove and its not to hot to touch.

 Have your child knead the play dough until smooth, and let it cool completely.

 Store in a sealed plastic bag or an airtight container; the dough lasts upto four months. Use good vegetable oil to prevent it from getting rancid.

 Repeat for other colors

 Add cooking essence like vanilla. pineapple, orange etc. for a sweet smell.

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If you do not find the cream of tartar then here is another recipe. This one requires no cooking. The basic ingredient remains the same.

Ingredients –

1 cup salt

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon cooking oil

7-8 drops of food coloring

Water

Step by Step Method

 Combine flour, salt and cream of tartar in a saucepan. Add oil and food color. Gradually add water and mix until the dough consistency is reached.

 Knead the play dough until smooth.

 Store this play dough in a sealed plastic bag or an airtight container. This one can be kept for about one week and slightly longer if stored in the refrigerator.

Creative Ideas

You can easily mould the play dough to make some animals like snakes, ladybird, caterpillar, butterfly being the simple ones. Just let the kids roll into coils and then make balls of different sizes. Then they can explore different ways of putting the bits together to make different creatures. You can also make food items like muffins, sausages etc.

If this sounds too hard to get then just use cookie cutters to cut different shapes and other objects. You also find some moulds in your child’s sand play kit. There are also designer rolling pins, stamps and hammers for play dough activities. Shop online for these tools to make playdough more interesting.

Collect little items like dried flowers, leaves, sticks, feathers and make different designs with the dough.