Fun with dough

The nice thing now is that the girls ask for things they would like to do from the activities that are kept in cupboards (items that are not regular toys and that I keep out of the way for play that needs a watchful eye - Chops is still putting things in her mouth on a daily basis - ARRRGGGHHH!).

Today stones were demanded, so we pulled out the dough, stones and lolly sticks to make some creative shapes.

I love home made dough I find it much softer and I am not so precious about it too (I feel myself twitching if they start shoving things into bought play dough - whats that about???)

There is a recipe here on The Imagination Tree but this is the one I use below and I always like to add a bit of glitter!

Glitter dough – infinitely better than normal dough, basically add a small pot of glitter when mixing the flour and salt together!  

2 cups of plain flour


4 tablespoons of 'cream of tartar'


Glitter

2 tablespoons of cooking oil


1 cup of salt


2 cups of boiling water with the 
food colouring added to it

Might not come together but gather and knead for a bit and its great.  Allow it to cool in a bag as I find this better and it keeps for ages.

Sick but still having fun!

So we have been a house a sickness! But still have a toddler to entertain so luckily we had help from neighbours and a bit of nursery time to fall back on and in between we set up a few activities.  

Luckily we had some 'cloud dough' made up already (thanks to The Imagination Tree for the inspiration for this).

7 cups of any type of flour (we used plain flour), 1 cup of vegetable oil or baby oil (we used vegetable), powder paint to colour the dough and as much glitter as you wish!!! (We also had fun making it together - Chops loves to stir)!

I put some stones, cutters and pots on a large play tray and we just had lots of fun and some how dinosaurs joined us - always a bonus.  Its such lovely stuff with a silky texture and makes solid forms and then crumbles back to a soft loose texture - could play with it for hours myself but Chops can manage about 15 - 20 mins at a time these days!  Best thing is its easier to clean up than sand and safe if a bit ends up in the mouth (which it invariably does with Chops).  It has kept really well in a sandwich box too, so great to whip out when needed.