Making Home Made Playdough

Playdough is a great material to have with kids around. Children can spend hours exploring, building, smushing and pulling good playdough. But it can get really expensive and with the self isolating practices put in place during the pandemic, it might be hard to get some. After all, you can't just purchase playdough at the grocery store. Or can you?

Campus Children's Centre, for years, has used home made playdough. The ingredients are readily available at your local grocery store. It probably doesn't taste good, but it is completely non-toxic. Here is a recipe:

In a medium saucepan, mix 1 Cup of Flour, 1/3 Cup of Salt and 2 Teaspoons of Cream of Tartar (which is NOT actually a cream, as I once realized, much to the amusement of my coworkers at the time). Next mix in 1 Tablespoon of Vegetable Oil. Bring 1 Cup of Water to boil. You can add food colouring to the water or even colour it with Koolaid mix to create a colour and scent.

Mix the boiling water into the dry ingredients. Stir until it becomes a sticky, cohesive dough. Let it cool a bit, then knead for several minutes until all the stickiness is gone. You may need to add some more flour during this process - if it is too sticky - or more water.

Once it cools, it will be ready to use! When done with the playdough, seal it in an air-tight container; it'll last longer.

If you don't have playdough tools and materials at home, just look around you kitchen. Things like cookie cutters, straws, rolling pins, utensils, spatulas, etc. Find objects that shape playdough and others that you can squeeze the playdough through. But mostly, just have fun!