A Lesson in Colors with Play Dough

Today my 2.5 year old and I made play dough in primary colors, which we then mixed together to make the secondary colors. There's something magical about putting a ball of red and a ball of blue together and watching it slowly swirl together in your fingers into purple. And then brown, because of course after that we mixed them all together (having a two year old is very hard on my perfectionist nature!). We used this no-bake play dough recipe from PBS with great results. I actually quartered it because that seemed like A LOT of dough. And it was. A quarter was just right for our purposes. To save you the trouble of the math, here're the amounts we used:

• 1 c. flour
• 1/3 c. salt (okay, technically, if you quarter the recipe it's 1/4 c and 2 tbsp, but 1/3 worked well.)
• 1/4 c. water
• 1 tbsp oil

1.  Mix it all together. You might need a touch more oil and/or water during the mixing process. 
2.  Divide the dough into 3 balls.
3.  Use food coloring to make a ball of each red, blue, and yellow.
4.  Divide each colored ball into 4 balls of each of those colors. 12 balls total.
5.  Mix in different combinations two balls of different colors to get your secondary colors, and two of the same color to get your primary. Dividing it that way makes it so you roughly have the same amount of each color. (Hi, remember me from above, perfectionist?)

So now you have six  balls of six different colors.

1.  red + red= red
2.  red + yellow= orange
3.  yellow + yellow= yellow
4.  yellow + blue= green
5.  blue + blue= (surprise!) blue 
6.  blue+ red= purple (sort of, have you ever met a color more hard to mix than a nice purple???)

Tip: If your dough gets a little dry when you're playing around with it, just damped your hands and smoosh the balls around. It'll get right back to its original pliability. 

Baking Soda Snow

I love playing in the snow with the kids but we haven't had any this year and it's been  too c-c-c-old if there'd been any anyway. Fake snow INDOORS seemed like a good way to have some snow fun despite the lack of real snow.

I found this great recipe for baking soda snow on Momma's Fun World.  This stuff is mold-able just like the real stuff and is completely safe. It is made from two ingredients I already had handy- baking soda and conditioner- so that's always a win for me. And it keeps. Stick it in a tupperware container or, like we did, play with it in a baking dish that has a lid and pop the lid on it when you're through. A month later and it was still in great shape. The pictures show just a half-batch of the snow to give you an idea.

 My 2 year old had such a great time making snowmen (Use twigs or pipecleaners for arms, choc. chips and pony beads for buttons and eyes) and playing treasure hunt in the snow with some buttons and "gems" we have hanging around. (Don't put anything in there you wouldn't want the finish to get "polished" off of- it is baking soda after all.) Both my 5 and 7 year old played with it when they got home from school and loved playing with it just as much. A lot of bang for little buck an little effort. I definitely recommend trying it!


What You Need (for a full batch; we only did a half.):

• 3c. baking soda
• 1/2 c. white conditioner (We used the Sauve Kids 3-1 because that's what we had on hand and it worked great.)

What You Do:

• Mix it up using a fork or your hands, adding more conditioner if necessary.
•  Play!
•  You can pop it in a resealable container when you're done and use it over and over again, though you might have to add a little more conditioner to refreshen it.
• 
  

 

Salt Baking Dough

While I'm at it, here's a reliable recipe for salt dough. It's fun to play with and you can color it with food coloring. You can also bake what you make. We often use it to make Christmas ornaments and have used it for handprint ornaments for the Grandmas for Mother's day. To make ornaments just use a straw to punch out holes in your ornaments before baking and make sure to flip them half-way through baking. Or you can just air dry.

Recipe:

Salt Baking Dough

• 3/4 c. salt
• 3/4 c. warm water
• 2 c. flour

1. Mix salt into the warm water and cool. Add dye now if you wish. Add flour slowly, stirring. Knead.
2. Roll dough to 1/4-1/2" thickness and cut out ornaments.
   
3. Bake at 325 degrees for 30-60 minutes, until moisture is out. Cover with foil if necessary to avoid browning.
4. When cool, paint and seal with water-based polyurethane.
   

Gingerbread Play Dough

This is a recipe Griffin came home from school with and is a variation on good old salt dough. It smells delicious but probably doesn't taste so good! (Though it is edible, just in case your Octopus does eat it.)


Recipe:

Gingerbread Play Dough

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 tbsp. ground ginger
• 1 tbsp. ground cinnamon
• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 cup water
• additional vegetable oil as needed to improve consistency.

Mix the ingredients together. Knead until the dough is smooth. Play.