My babies love a spot of Playdough fun. I normally buy the cheapest I can possibly find and it is pretty much unusable after 2 plays. But after spotting a simple homemade Playdough recipe on TV one evening (Super scrimpers channel 4), I decided to give making it myself a whirl, and very, very easy it is too. After a couple of batches, I have slightly modified the original recipe, and find this Playdough to be the perfect consistency, the babies love it and if you store it properly (ours is in a sandwich bag in a cake tin), then it lasts for weeks and weeks. Admittedly this rainbow batch has eventually moulded together into one big giant brown ball, but it is still going strong and the babies still love it.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons of Oil, any variety
1 cup Salt
2 cups Flour
3/4 cup Water
Food Colouring, drops of
Throw it all into a bowl and mix it, mix it, knead it, knead it.
White Playdough:
You will now have one big ball of white play dough, which looks quite lovely. Separate this into 6 equal balls.
Colour:
Now time to add the rainbow. I only own three colours, you can buy pre-mixed colours such as green, orange and the like but that seems a bit of a waste to me, so I stick to the three primary colours and mix the others myself. To gain these colours I used, Red: two drops of the red and one yellow, Orange: two drops yellow plus one drop red, Yellow: three drops of yellow, Green: one drop blue to two yellow, Blue: three drops of blue, Pink: three drops red. The colours here are quite muted, solely because I was not sure whether the colour would go all over the babies (plus sofa, and clothes, and kitchen...you get the idea) but I can safely say it has not and next time I will double the amount of colour I used to make the colours more vibrant. I should also point out that you need to add the colour straight after making the dough. I left one batch for a day between these stages, and the colour just did not stick. One more tip would be stating the obvious but wash your hands between each colouring.
Pretty rainbow:
Playdough Play:
One good point for this play dough is if the babies did attempt to eat it, despite several warnings not to, at least it is all edible ingredients, though very salty and very yukky. Lastly I bought the ingredients especially, as cheaply as possible naturally, and the actual amount used was very minimal. I estimate I could make at least 8, maybe more batches using these supplies.
Rainbow Playdough biscuit anyone?
Cost: Flour: 60p, Salt: 34p, Oil: £1.59, Food colours: 79p each x3, all Sainsbury's.
Supplies: Mixing bowl, tablespoon, cup, flour, salt, oil, water and food colouring.
Time taken: 20 minutes.
Now I realise Playdough making is pretty basic stuff, but until I saw the TV program the idea to make my own had never entered my head. So do you have any basic recipes for any other everyday baby play supplies? Have you made play dough and can recommend any further hints or tips? And do your babies also only seem to make biscuits? The little lady does serve them up on a nice plate though. Lovely touch.
