What Is The Best Playdough Recipe?

Why Is Playdough A Great Activity For My Toddler?

Playdough is so versatile. It can be used to improve your child’s fine motor skills. Fine motor skills relate to using the small muscles in your hands. The benefits of practising fine motor skills at an early age are that it prepares your child for holding a pencil and writing.

The ability to hold a pencil in the correct grip and write for a prolonged amount of time is not a skill that we are born with. It’s something that takes practice to master and so a section of early years planning focuses on incorporating activities which work on fine motor skills.

As I wrote above, playdough is versatile and you will find a list of examples of how you could use playdough to support your child’s fine motor skills further down the page.

Another reason that playdough is such a good learning tool is that you can teach mathematical vocabulary while your child plays with it. Phrases such as “longer/shorter than” can be used when making snakes as well as “thicker/thinner”. You can also compare the number of items. E.g. If you’ve invited them to make 5 green apples and 3 red apples. 5 green apples is more than 3 red apples. This person has more green apples than red apples. How many apples do you have altogether? There are lots of ways of getting Maths into activities using playdough.

Examples of Fine Motor Skill Activities

• Playdough
• Scissor practice
• Ripping paper
• Scribbling
• Using a pincer grip to pick smaller items up
• Pushing buttons
• Pulling masking tape off toys
• Holding a toothbrush and brushing teeth
• Threading beads onto a pipe cleaner

What Can You Do With Playdough?

1. Make characters. Then play with the characters.
2. Use playdough activity sheets and add playdough to make the pictures on them.
3. Make prints using items from nature, like stones and leaves. You could also press their favourite small plastic toy into the playdough and see what imprint it makes.
4. Draw lines with a stick.
5. Practise rolling the playdough into sausages. Great fine motor practice!
6. Do some pretend baking and make “cupcakes”.
7. Make Hallowe’en monsters. Use pipecleaners, googly eyes, feathers, stones, beads, lolly sticks and other small items to make Hallowe’en monsters.
8. Practise cutting skills using scissors on the playdough.
9. Cut out shapes using playdough or cookie cutters.
10. Use playdough rolling pins and create patterns or simply roll the playdough flat.

Great Playdough Accessories

How Can I Make My Playdough Get To The Next Level?

Playdough, as it is, is fine to play with but what if you want to mix it up a bit and add a little something extra? Here’s a couple of ideas for changing up your playdough:

• Add a scent to the dough. One example is cinnamon for a Christmas-themed dough.
• Add glitter to make it sparkle.
• Change the colour. Ask the children what colour they’d like. Include them in the making of it (safely).

How Do I Get Playdough Out Of My Carpet?

First, use a blob of playdough to get as much playdough out of the carpet as you can. Don’t push it in as you don’t want it getting deeper into the fibres of your carpet.

You may need to use your fingers to part the fibres to get any playdough out that has gone deeper in.

Following this, allow the playdough to dry as long as possible, this could be for a couple of days. Adding water or cleaner will delay this process and may make the issue worse, so be patient.

If you want to speed up the process, blast some frozen air (compressed air) onto the playdough to freeze it. Then, brush it out using a stiff brush or metal spoon. Vacuum the bits up.

How Do I Get Playdough Out Of Clothes?

Even with the best will in the world and using an apron, playdough will still manage to get on kids’ clothes.

The best way to get playdough out of your clothes is to use a soft piece of playdough and gently try to coax as much playdough off the clothes as possible. Then, hang the clothes up to allow the playdough to dry out. Wetting playdough, especially dyed playdough is just going to make the dough go further into the fibres and allow the dye to spread.

Cornflour (corn starch) can help speed up the process. Apply a generous amount to the stain and leave to dry. The cornflour will soak up any moisture from the playdough and dry it out.

Once dry, scrape off any playdough with a spoon or old toothbrush.

Next, soak the clothing in cold water with washing-up liquid (dish soap). The cold water helps loosen any playdough that’s left whereas warm playdough would set the stain.

How Do I Store Playdough?

Homemade playdough is best stored in an airtight container or plastic bag in the fridge. Ours can keep for months like this. Throw it away when it starts to go white.

How Long Does Playdough Last?

It completely depends on how it’s stored, what is in it and how much it is played with.

If stored in a fridge in an airtight container and used every now and again, your playdough should be fine for around 3 months.

To tell whether your playdough is past its best, keep an eye out for mould growing on it or hard bits because it’s drying out. Hard playdough is no fun to play with so should be thrown away. You could try to revive it by adding some cold water, otherwise throw it away.

How Do I Make Sure I Don’t Stain My Hands While Making Playdough?

Use gloves if you don’t want any of the food colouring getting onto your hands. I always find that this is the best way to avoid staining my hands while making playdough.

How Do I Make My Playdough Super Soft?

Adding water to dried-out playdough can make it get its softness back. Cream of Tartar also creates a super soft texture so try a recipe with that in it.

My Favourite Playdough Recipe

Here’s my current favourite playdough recipe. It’s really easy to make and you can have new playdough in less than 10 minutes.

Ingredients

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 cup water
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• a few drops of food colouring (optional)

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan. I like to add my food colouring at this point too and then my fingers don’t get stained though it may leave your wooden spoon a bit colourful!

2. Put on the hob and heat up slowly, mixing all the time with a wooden spoon.

3. When the mixture start to come away from the sides, turn it over to get all the gooeyness cooked.

4. Take it off the heat and put onto a worksurface.
5. Knead the dough for a couple of minutes when it’s not too hot to touch.
6. Optional: Add glitter at this point.

7. When the dough has cooled down, either play with it or store in a plastic food bag or tub in the fridge. This playdough keeps for months if you store it like this.