Homemade Play Dough
Homemade Play Dough
This play dough recipe has been one of our best craft projects yet. Dot has been known to play with it for literally HOURS during the day. The hardest part is convincing her not to mix all of the colors together, but we do what we can, right? The recipe itself is pretty easy, although I had a bit of a scare, as I figured I didn’t have cream of tartar around the house. It turns out my husband had purchased some for something he made back at Thanksgiving, so we were able to add it in. Apparently, it gives the play dough better elasticity. (By the way, don’t let the number of pictures in this post make you think this is a complicated project. It was actually really, really easy. I just took a lot of pictures.)
Homemade Play Dough Ingredients
- 1 cup flour
- 1 cup (warm) water
- 1/4 cup salt
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
- food coloring
Homemade play dough ingredients
Measure dry play dough ingredients into a saucepan
Play dough ingredients start out a little soupy
As you cook over medium heat, the play dough firms up, it only takes a few minutes
When the play dough is firm, take it out of the pan and knead it. It’s probably not too hot, but check it just in case to make sure you or your kids don’t get burned.
Coloring your homemade play dough
I then cut the dough into six roughly equal pieces, one of each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple)
Five drops of food coloring per play dough ball
I placed each ball into a plastic bag and then kneaded it to get the color to spread evenly. To get the colors, try this.
- Red = 5 drops of red
- Orange = 3 drops of yellow, two drops of red
- Yellow = 5 drops of yellow
- Green = 5 drops of green (or three drops of yellow and two drops of blue)
- Blue = 5 drops of blue
- Purple = 3 drops of blue, two drops of red
You can also make your play dough smell good by adding things like peppermint extract, cinnamon, vanilla extract, etc. I added banana extract to the yellow, but apparently I needed more, as we couldn’t smell it when all was said and done.
Make scented play dough
A play dough rainbow!
Keep your play dough in an airtight container, and it will last quite a while. We’ve had ours for about two weeks, and it’s still in pretty good condition!
What I Learned the Hard Way: Mixing the color into the play dough is harder than it looks. The majority of the time we spent making the dough revolved around mixing in the color. You can make all of your dough a single color by adding the food coloring to the mixture before you heat it, but I wanted to have lots of colors and think it was worth the extra work.
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14 comments for “Homemade Play Dough”
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The Woo! Jr. Kids Activities Network was founded by Wendy Piersall, a well known social media mom who has appeared on the Today Show & written for Entrepreneur.com as an advocate for women in business. She is also writing her first book, Mom Blogging for Dummies, being released in the summer of 2011 by Wiley Publishing. But behind it all is a mother of three who keeps herself sane by being creative and crafty with her kids.
In college we used to use kool aid packets in the dry ingredients to color our play dough!!
Hello.
I am writing from Turkey. I did the recipe above yesterday. I made red and yellow. I divided The dough into two equal part and then added the food coloring and heated them in teflon pan. I think this is easier than mixing the colors after heating.
Now my two little daughters are playing it in the kitchen.
@Amy – I love the idea but wonder why exactly you were making play dough in college…
@gul – I’m so excited that you decided to use the recipe. Did you just heat each color separately?
I add glitter and small sequin stars and butterflies (the ones you buy in party shops to scatter on tables as decorations) and the kids love it. I
Yes, I heated each color separately.
Awesome suggestion, Melanie!
[...] for her sister I made some Play Dough. I used this recipe which is awesome and my daughters helped me to color [...]
I used your recipe to make a double batch. I colored half pink for Valentine’s Day and left the other half white, but added sparkles so my students can pretend it’s snow. Thanks for posting the recipe!
I love this recipe. I’m going to try it out. Very simple directions. great blog!
[...] Related Pages: Learning ABCs Worksheets, Learning Colors Worksheets, Homemade Play Dough [...]
My 2yr old helped his cousins 8 & 10 make this dough. We made it by adding hot water to the mix at a table. That way our work space was contained and safe. We made primary colors and mixed them for secondary tints. Kneading the color in kept all 3 very busy, and just when the kids thought they had reached the pinnacle of fun we added glitter! The dough is splendid after a few days to set up. Great recipe, hours of imaginative play, thank you!
[...] even have to buy any supplies for this – we had everything on hand – styrofoam balls, play dough and a scrap of foam core board. I even went the extra mile and drew up animal and plant cell [...]
I, too, used to put kool-aid in as the playdough cooked. My recipe called for the kool-aid that already has sugar it. The results were fantastic. If you truly want to optimize the smells, this is the way to go. Be sure to keep it in the refrigerator between uses, and it easily lasts two weeks.
I always add the food colouring to the water and mix through while heating.