Công thức làm "Đất nặn" từ bột mì- 4mins only

The other day I slightly modified our usual no-cook play dough recipe and it turned out to be thebest ever! It’s softer, smoother and doesn’t start to dry out even if it’s played with all day. This is my new go-to recipe and I just had to share it!

I also realised that, even though I have about a million-and-one play dough recipes and ideas on this site, I don’t have a post simply dedicated to how to make the stuff! So here it is.

If you have never tried making your own play dough, this is the time to give it a try. It’s very different to store bought play dough, being much softer and lasting a whole lot longer.

The benefits of using play dough for young children are wonderful and the play possibilities are endless!

You need:

• 2 cups plain flour (all purpose)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• Up to 1.5 cups boiling water (adding in increments until it feels just right)
• food colouring (optional)
• few drops glycerine (optional- adds more shine!)

Method:

• Mix the flour, salt, cream of tartar and oil in a large mixing bowl
• Add the boiling water
• Stir continuously until it becomes a sticky, combined dough
• Add the food colouring and glycerine (both optional)
• Allow it to cool down then take it out of the bowl and knead it vigorously for a couple of minutes until all of the stickiness has gone. * This is the most important part of the process, so keep at it until it’s the perfect consistency!*
• (If it remains a little sticky then add a touch more flour until just right)

Voila!

Now play, play play!

Check our the Play Dough Page for tons of inspiration for things to add to the dough and ways to play with it!

Cách làm cát có thể tạo hình trong khuôn

Last week we had a go at making golden shimmery cloud dough but it turned out to be something quite different to what we expected! Thanks to the lovely Kierna from No Such Thing as Bad Weather and a reader called Rachel, I was introduced to a new recipe which makes a totally different end product! 

It’s amazing how many different play substances you can make at home, with very few ingredients!

(New and improved!) recipe for cloud dough or mouldable sand:

• 5 cups of plain flour
• 1 cup baby oil

Mix well together and PLAY! That’s it!

Counting out 5 cups of flour into a tub- more or less accurately!

 We made some and LOVED it! (I’ve since gone back to our original post and had to rename it simply as “dough” as it is definitely NOT like this “cloud dough”.) What this reminds me of most of all though, is a type of mouldable sand like the branded Moon Sand or Moon Dough (though not as hideous to clear up!!) You can squeeze it, form it, shape it, and use it to make little sand castles or dough shapes. And it smells wonderful and feels silky soft! A great thing to try as an alternative to play dough!

Stirring in 1 cup of delicious baby oil with a spoon

Cakie got very serious about the making of the dough and wanted to be totally in charge. Which meant she did the counting out of the cups herself, great for measuring and counting using 1 to 1 correspondence. She tipped in about half a cup of glitter to make it really sparkle!

“This is very sticky Mummy!”

 She used lots of descriptive language to try and explain what it felt like between her fingers, as the ingredients transformed from dry to sticky, then became silky soft and squishy at the end.

Tipped into a tray for easier play

 We tipped it into a tray for easier access and added mini flower pots, cups, spoons and paintbrushes for exploration.

Filling and emptying and making “sand” moulds  She filled up the pots and used them to make sandcastles which she then decorated with cocktail umbrellas and glass pebbles. We were very impressed that the dough retained its shape so well, and this is why we ended up referring to it as sand instead! Just like a silky soft damp sand. Wonderful!

“Ta da! I made a sand castle!”

We stored ours in a container with a lid a week ago and so far it has been played with a few times and is still just as soft. Hopefully it will last as long as play dough! I’ll let you know 

Learning Links:

• maths: counting using 1:1 correspondence, counting reliably up to 5 and beyond, measuring, filling and emptying, talking about capacity
• knowledge & understanding: changes of consistency, describing and exploring materials 
• creativity: model making, imaginative play, storytelling

Cakie: 3 years 2 months

Pop: 19 months

Cách làm cát màu

Make some home made moon sand with this easy recipe for a wonderful sensory play experience for kids! Using just 3 simple ingredients, it can be formed and moulded, used to make impressions and cut out shapes and makes the best sand castles ever! Even better is that it’s gluten free so all can play.

We are big fans of sensory play and like to try as many different homemade recipes as we can! I’m always surprised at how easy they are and typically they use just a few everyday ingredients. I’ve had home made moon sand book-marked as a recipe idea for a long time ever since I first saw it on one of my all-time favourite blogs, Irresistible Ideas for Play-Based Learning (how can you resist checking out a blog with a name like that?!)

We have used commercially produced Moon Sand once and were not that impressed as it seemed to get everywhere and was a nightmare to clean up. This recipe however, turned out much more like the fun Cloud Dough recipe we have used lots of times and makes similarly awesome sand castles and moulded shapes! We decided to add some colour and glitter to ours to add a little more  ZING  and it turned out beautifully!

Home made coloured moon sand recipe:

• 4 cups play sand
• 2 cup corn flour (corn starch in US)
• 1 cup water
• 2 tbsp coloured powder paint (we divided our plain mix into two so we could make both pink and purple)
• huge sprinkling of glitter

Method:

• Mix the sand and cornflour in a large bowl until combined. Then tip in the water in increments, mixing it in as you go along. By the end it should be well combined and the consistency is like a crumbly pastry mix. If it doesn’t hold together when formed in a ball then add a tiny bit more water until it feels right. It should not be wet, but feel slightly damp.
• When this is achieved then stir through the colours, using as many as you like. You will need to use your fingers to thoroughly mix the colours, like making breadcrumbs or pastry. This stage is fantastic for developing fine motor skills!

Next step is to PLAY! (always the best bit of course!) We tipped it into our sensory play table which we use for all things messy outside.

Then we added small scoops, spades, sand moulds, buckets and any loose materials they chose for decorations.They made a volcano and poked a hole inside for pretend explosions. This would be fantastic to add some bicarb and vinegar inside to make pretend eruptions with, maybe we will do this next time we use it.Baby played happily too, filling and emptying containers and using the sand moulds with a little help. She, of course, loved to destroy and knock down the structures best of all. After all, that’s her job as a baby! They even found they could cut shapes from it using cookie cutters, although they didn’t transfer too well when picked up and moved. The remaining negative spaces were beautiful however!

The powder paint didn’t colour their hands too badly, only Pop’s who dipped hers directly into the powder paint, but it washed straight off anyway, more easily than regular paint. The moon sand was left out in our table with the lid on and dried out to a sand like consistency after 2 days. We will either add water again to revive it or mix it into our regular sand pit for a colourful addition!

What they are learning while they play:

creativity: inventing games and stories with sensory materials, creating sculptures and forms, exploring patterns and spaces using tools

knowledge and understanding/ science: combining ingredients to create new materials, mixing colours

maths: counting out cup fulls and following recipes

Cakie: 4.9

Pop: 3.3

Bean: 16 months

Search our archives for all our other Play Recipes too! There are dozens to try!

Cách làm FingerPaint từ bột ngô

We made some home made finger paint today and had great fun with our little group of Mums and tots with babies as young as 6 months getting involved in the action! It’s totally edible (though not that delicious!) and completely non-toxic, and the best part is it was so easy to make and will last!

This is the recipe ( I googled a few, found the common denominator and went from there):
* 2 cups of corn flour (corn starch in the US I think)
* 1 cup of cold water
* 4.5 cups of boiling water
* Liquid food colouring

Method:
Mix the cornflour with the cold water and stir together. Pour in the boiling water and stir between each cup. It goes really strange (you are basically mixing a hot oobleck goop) but keep stirring and it literally seems to “melt” into a wonderful, custard-like consistency. We then separated it into individual jam jars before adding colouring, but you can do it however you like and this is the stage to add colour.

Edited to add:
Some people have found that the paint remains liquid and doesn’t thicken up as it should. I have no idea why this should be, but I have two possible solutions, based on the fabulous commenters below!

1. Try simply adding up to 1 more cup of cornflour/ cornstarch and see if that helps to thicken it.
2. Try mixing the paint in a pan on a medium heat instead of just in a bowl, as that will help to bring it together.

It’s always frustrating posting recipes that work brilliantly when you try them yourself, but for some reason don’t work for everyone! I can only assume it’s down to slight change in ingredients used and perhaps how the directions are followed. Do try it as it is LOVELY stuff! Thanks 

C helped me to spoon this into the jars and she absolutely LOVED every minute of the whole process!

I added a squeeze of colouring to each jar and then between us we mixed them up.

During mixing they looked fabulous!

And the finished paints look like a little work of art  Almost too good to paint with…but not quite.

All lined up and ready for action. I put in some thick paint brushes for the toddlers but expected babies to use their fingers. They seemed to understand that perfectly 

Baby Boy is 6 months and this was his first little painting. We weren’t sure how impressed he was!

Kiddies getting stuck in and a couple more crawling on the floor, waiting for their turns!

That’s more like it baby Boy, get those fingers in and give it a good squish!

 It was a bit like painting with coloured, waxy custard! Very strange yet extremely pleasing to touch!

K experimenting with double paint-brushing.

J having a whale of a time!

Big boy N knows how to paint properly!

Someone got a tad possessive of all “her” paints. “Dey Mines!”

And then we introduced edible finger paint number 2! Chocolate and strawberry Angel Delight pudding mixes (although these were actually a Sainsbury’s Basics range for 7p each!) We just mixed the powder with milk and whisked it until lovely and thick, then put it on the table for them to touch and add to their paintings. There was no added food colouring, but lovely brown, chocolatey messiness everywhere nonetheless 

Baby J was very interested in the chocolate pudding goo! Who can blame him?!

It’s important to use ALL of the senses when exploring! Yum yum!

And C did a little bit of mark-making with a fork through the lovely, thick, gloopy mess.

Little Pop found the brush very tasty and had her fair share of pudding paint too.

Overall verdict? Very easy to make and extremely satisfying results in terms of texture and consistency. Lovely to know that it is non-toxic and edible, therefore safe for even the really tiddly ones. Colours are quite light and therefore don’t make a bold mark on paper, but I’m sure if you used a lot more colouring that could be fixed. The paint is thick and gel-like and so takes a long time to dry, but when it does it makes a great, almost 3-D effect on the paper! I have put the lids on our jam jars and will try storing them in the fridge and see how long they last. Hope hubby doesn’t spread them on his toast by mistake!

This activity is good for:
* involving all ages of children
* creativty and expression
* using fingers and tools to do mark-making
* exploring the senses and discovering new textures
* knowledge and understanding of the world: following a recipe, mixing and stirring, combining materials and mixing colours
* gross and fine motor skills (mixing the colours into the paint was hard work!)

We have another home made paint recipe to share tomorrow! Enjoy messy, creative, fun!

Cách làm handprint từ Salt Dough

Create some cute handprint Christmas tree ornaments using green sparkly salt dough and paints! These are lovely as a little keepsake and memento of how the kids have grown. I do love handprint keepsakes!

 To create these christmas tree handprints from salt dough I thought we would try to colour the dough before cooking for a change. We have made blue and green stars and christmas tree ornaments in the past and knew that salt dough does take colour really well before drying. Click here to read our full instructions for making salt dough and simply add green colouring and a large sprinkling of green glitter at the kneading stage. Simple!

Once the dough was coloured, kneaded and glitter added, i rolled it out and formed it into flat circles. The girls each placed their hands in the middle and I poked two holes at the top of each one, using a straw. The holes are vital for being able to thread twine through and hang them up afterwards. They went into the oven at about 100 degrees C (around 200 F) for 2-3 hours. When they were cool I painted inside the handprint with a darker shade of green paint (just ordinary washable paint) then left them to dry again. 

When dry I set them out as little invitations to create, using gold and red paints, cotton buds and fabric stars to decorate them as trees.They dipped the ends of the cotton buds into paint and carefully dabbed bauble shapes over the trees. Then they stuck the fabric stars to the top using self-adhesive glue dots (but any type of strong glue would work.) Pop decorated Baby Bean’s for her and did a lovely job of it!

Then we threaded some red and white twine through the holes, wrote their names and ages on the back with a permanent pen and now they are hanging up in our home! These would also make such a sweet gift for grandparents.

Love handprint ideas? See more here:

Collaborative Handprint Christmas Tree

Handprint Rudolph

Salt Dough Handprint and Footprint Keepsakes

Baby Handprint Plaque

Handprint Measuring

  This activity is good for:

• Sensory: messy and tactile exploration
• Motor skills: kneading/ squishing/ rolling/ flattening/ poking/ squeezing/ treading
• Maths: weighing quantities/ counting/ capacity (full, empty)
• PHSE: working independently
• Creativity: painting/ modelling/ sculpting

Cách làm Đất sét nung-Salt dough

Salt dough ornaments are SO easy to make and have become a little tradition in the build up the Christmas in our family. Here is where we first wrote about the salt dough Christmas decorationsthat we made this time last year and over the past month we have made a few more batches, in different shapes, colours and designs! They are brilliant to make with even young toddlers and are a fantastic gift idea for family and friends to add to their own trees!

 How to make salt dough:

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup plain flour
• Up to 1 cup of water (add gradually)

Method:

• Combine the salt and flour then pour in the water gradually, stopping when it has become dough-like and not too sticky. There should be no residue left on your fingers when you touch it. Knead it on a floured surface for a few minutes to make it soft, workable and stretchy, like you would with any dough. This step is wonderful for strengthening those small hand muscles essential for writing and cutting!

 Choose a range of cookie cutter shapes and simply cut straight from the dough. We used Christmas trees, stars and hearts. Poke a straw through the centre, near the top, of each shape so that ribbon can be threaded through later.

 Lay them on some greaseproof or baking paper and on a baking tray. Cook them on a VERY low heat (around 100 degrees C/ 202 F) for up to 3 hours. If the shapes are over 1cm thick then they will probably need to be turned over during cooking.

 It is VERY important not to have the oven on too high. This will cause the salt dough to bubble up and fill with air, as essentially it is being cooked. What you are really aiming for is to dry them out thoroughly, over a slow period of time.

 As soon as they are out of the oven they can be left to cool while your child chooses which colours and decorations to add! We used acrylic paints which adhere to the dough really successfully. Ordinary water-based children’s paint does work, but the colours are not as vibrant and the paint can flake off eventually. The acrylics work as a sealant and keep the colours strong and beautiful!

 Once the paint is dry, spread on some PVA (runny) glue and sprinkle over some glitter for a wonderfully Christmassy effect!

 We have also tried adding sequins and buttons, which make gorgeous alternatives!

 When they are dry, thread through with thin ribbon or twine and hang on the tree! You can write the date in the back to remember when they were made too, adding a special memory to the occasion.

If you liked this idea, please share it via Facebook, StumbleUpon, Pinterest or Tumblr! Thank You.
Why not try making footprint and handprint keepsakes too?