Last year in this blog I have shared the recipe we have used that included flour, vegetable oil, salt and citric acid. It was a good recipe. Also, importantly, it was a zero-waste recipe, so you could make it using the ingredients that come without any plastic packaging.

But since then we have simplified our play-dough recipe which now only uses flour and salt. We found it work just as well, in some ways even better. It appears that the acidic ingredient makes the play-dough more silky to the touch. But at the same time it seems like the dough is a bit more springy, so as kids try to roll out out into think sheets or spaghetti-like shapes it shrinks back. The salt-only recipe allows kids to roll it out into very thin sheets or strings.

So, I’m going to share our new recipe here, and also will leave our old recipe up on the website as well, in case you’d like to try it out. In that blog post you can also see the organic plant-based ways to give your DIY playdough beautiful colors. And also has a list of our favorite supplies for kids to use when working with play-dough.

Last week we had a post about the benefits of making play dough with children from scratch and sharing with you just how much they enjoy the process. In this post we want to share the actual recipe we use most commonly at the school, and what we use to color and decorate it naturally. This recipe uses only organic ingredients that are safe for touch as well as taste (although it really doesn’t taste very nice).

Remember that the beauty of this process is that you can fix anything about it — from color saturation to the consistency of the dough itself. And also remember that children will enjoy experimenting either way, whether or not you feel like everything is working out as you planned!

All in all it is an activity that gives a child a whole variety of skills to practice and sensations to experience.

Last week we had a lot of rainy chilly days here in Colorado. We still had our daily nature walks with the children at the school, but also got to spend a good share of time in the cabin warming up, being cozy and having fun learning things. We read books about eagles and the children had fun imagining being eagles and flying around catching fish. We played hide and seek, which turned into a game of an owl searching for little mice. And the children also built beautiful towers with wooden blocks. But the biggest hit of all was making our own play dough! Everyone loved it from the youngest kids to the oldest ones. Boys and girls were all engrossed into the creative process that is a bit of chemistry, a bit of cooking and a whole lot of artistry on their part!

So before we share the recipe and what we use to get different beautiful colors naturally or to decorate our creations we wanted to share what makes making the play-dough with children such a great activity that benefits and invokes many of their skills and sensations.