Monday, November 14, 2011

Operation Homemade Play-doh


To be honest... I've always been quite terrified of the mess that homemade ANYTHING creates, especially when I include my young assistants. However, today I decided to OVERCOME my FEAR and actually CONQUER the MISSION.


We started with some basic ingredients that we found online for a homemade playdoh recipe. Unfortunately, the proportion sizes made the project fail misserably! So we CREATED OUR OWN -

What you'll need:

4 cups FLOUR

1 cup SALT

1/4 cup CORNSTARCH

2 cups WATER

FOOD COLORING


(I've seen some recipe's online call for Cream of Tartar, but I didn't find it necessary, so I didn't use it. Although, I'm sure it could be added without a significant difference.)


DIRECTIONS:

1. Mix all of the ingredients together until it thickens and becomes difficult to stir.


2. Take a handful out of the bowl and kneed with some extra flour, this will help the dough from being soo sticky. Once you've done that throw your portion into a ziplock bag with three-four drops of the food coloring of your choice. Seal, then twist the top (making the bag extra secure so dough doesn't squeeze out the top). SQUEEZE your bag, attempting to distribute the dye throughout the dough. 3. Resist the urge to clean up the mess your child is about to make. (This part was VERY DIFFICULT for me). Take the dough out of the bag (even if the color isn't completely distributed, it's okay, because as your child plays with the dough it will spread out more evenly). Add a little flour if the dough is still sticky.. and let your child CREATE their favorite DINOSOUR, ICE CREAM CONE, or PET SNAKE. Once they are finished, roll it into a ball, place it back in a ziplock bag, so it will be ready to enjoy next time without the mess of the FLOUR!