Festive Spiced Play Dough

This play dough smells so good, I want to eat it!

Recipe:

• 1 cup of salt
• 1 cup of flour
• a couple of tablespoons of mixed spice
• 1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
• 1 cup of water.
• food colouring

Combine all the dry ingredients together and mix well.  Add the water . Drop the food colouring into the mixture until you have the desired shade you would like.

Then place over a low heat and KEEP STIRRING to produce a nice smooth dough.  An electric hand mixer is great for this part and saves your arm muscles!

When it's nice and thick, take off the heat and transfer onto a sheet of cling film or a plastic container.  When it has cooled enough to handle, knead it until smooth and then leave to cool completely.

Can be stored in an air tight container in the fridge for 1-2 weeks.


I set this out on the table for my little people with some christmas tree cutters of different sizes, some sequins, rollers, rolling pins, etc and allowed them to explore.

They enjoyed decorating the trees and developed their mathematics when talking about positional language and sizes.

Playdough Cupcakes

I only had two little girls to look after one day last week and they asked to make some playdough.

The girls helped to add the ingredients into a big saucepan and we added lots of purple food colouring which they chose themselves. The recipe I use can be found here.

I set it on the hob and stirred it continuously until it formed a doughy consistensy and then set it to cool on the side while we went to play.

Once cooled, the girls practiced rolling, cutting and mark-making in the dough and cutting out little people which I then had to make playdough T-shirts for!

 

 


I then provided them with some paper cake cases and some birthday candles and they made some playdough cupcakes.

 

 

When Oliver came in and saw we were playing with Playdough he joined us too and made his own cakes! See; not just for girls!