Playdough is a brilliant activity to do with kids. It’s a calming experience that encourages even the most energetic children to sit down and get stuck in. Our playdough recipe is squishy, soft and easy to use. Even very young toddlers can shape and mold it and enjoy the feel of it between their fingers.
Playdough for fine motor skills
Fine motor skills help with eating, play and learning. They are important skills that will help your child control their hands, fingers, mouth, eyes and tongue.
Kids develop these skills with plenty of practice and opportunity. For example, play dough is an excellent tool for supporting the development of fine motor skills because it is intricate work that requires hand-eye coordination and plenty of finger work.
Shaping playdough takes plenty of finger control and allows your child to work on this critical skill. Your child will need to have good control of their fingers before they can master writing, so playdough is a fantastic activity for preschoolers. It’s also a great way to kill time on a rainy day, so ensure you always have a tub of play doh waiting in the cupboard.
If you watch your child use playdough, you will see they use their hands in various ways. They squeeze, flatten, roll, pinch, squish and stretch. All of these things are great for developing the small muscles in their hands.
How to make playdough at home easy?
Kids love playdough (parents, not so much, especially those living in carpeted houses). They love the feel, the smell, and the joy of shaping and reshaping it until they grow bored. However, playdough dries up if left out. And your kids will almost certainly mix all the colors together.
So, you’ll be pleased to hear you don’t need to fork out on expensive branded playdough. Instead, you can make homemade playdough easily at home, and you won’t need to buy any specialist ingredients.
You probably have everything you need already. Also, it’s much cheaper than the store-bought stuff, so you won’t care when it ends up mixed together, dried out and encrusted in the carpet (well, you might still care about the carpet).
There are many playdough recipes to choose from, so keep reading to find out which playdough recipe we recommend.
What is the best homemade playdough recipe?
BellyBellly’s no-cook playdough recipe is a great recipe that is famously easy to make. You don’t need any specialist ingredients, apart from the cream of tartar which you may have lurking at the back of your cupboards.
As the name suggests, there’s no cooking involved, so it’s easy peasy, and you can play with the best homemade playdough soon as it’s ready. We think this is the best playdough recipe out there, so why not give it a try?
Ingredients:
- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 tbsp cream of tartar
- 1/4 cup salt
- 1 cup boiling water
- 2 tbsps cooking oil (vegetable oil is fine)
- Food coloring
Method:
- Mix the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
- Mix until you achieve desired squishy texture (warning: this can take a while).
For the full DIY playdough recipe and other tips, take a look at the following:
How To Make Playdough – No Cook Playdough Recipe
How do you make 3 ingredient playdough?
Three-ingredient playdough is more commonly known as salt dough and was a staple for those who grew up in the 1990s. It couldn’t be easier to make; take a look at the homemade playdough recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1 cup baking soda
- 3/4 cup water
Method:
- Combine all of the ingredients in a pan.
- Once combined, gently heat on the stovetop.
- Stir continuously until a ball forms, then immediately remove the pan from the heat.
- Place the dough somewhere to cool. Be careful; it will be very hot, to begin with.
The dough will be white, but you can add a couple of drops of food coloring and/or essential oils at this stage if you wish. One of the benefits of making your own playdough is that you can use food coloring and essential oils to create a variety of doughs to play with.
Homemade playdough recipe with jelly crystals
If you’re not a fan of food coloring, you might prefer this playdough recipe which uses jelly crystals instead. Not only does this provide gorgeous colors, but it also adds interesting smells to your playdough collection.
This recipe needs to be cooked over low heat, so you will have to wait for it to cool down before you can play with it. However, it might be worth the extra time for the joy of tasty-smelling playdough. It’s a great recipe and makes fantastic playdough.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup plain flour
- 2 tbsp cream of tartar
- 1/4 cup salt
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsp cooking oil
- 1 pack of jelly crystals
Method:
- Combine the ingredients in a medium saucepan.
- Heat over a low to medium heat, stirring consistently until thickened.
- Remove from heat and allow to cool.
For the full recipe and more tips, take a look at the following:
Playdough – Try Our Homemade Playdough Recipe
Fun playdough activities
If you’ve been playing with playdough a lot recently, you may be looking for new activities to freshen up your playdough game. Here are some fun playdough activities to try with your kids:
1. Use play dough to tell a story
This is a fantastic way to develop your child’s vocabulary and spend some quality bonding time together. It’s also an activity that can grow with your child. With toddlers, you can set them up with some playdough to play with.
Then, while they’re busy, shape some playdough into characters from their favorite story. Next, you can read the story while acting it out with the playdough characters.
Older children will love making characters while you read the story. They can get creative and shape the playdough to join in the telling of the story.
For kids who love making up stories, you can challenge them to make up a story with playdough. Perhaps you can take turns to develop the story based on the things you’re making out of the dough.
2. Counting
Playdough is a great teaching resource, and there are many different ways to use it. For example, if you are teaching a preschooler to count, you can use playdough to create things for them to count.
For example, how many balls have I made? Alternatively, you could challenge your child to make a set number of balls. You can use the same idea to teach basic arithmetic, too.
Sometimes, kids who don’t enjoy sitting still with a workbook will happily count through play. Playdough is a fantastic resource for learning through play. You can use it to teach other things, including shapes, colors and letters of the alphabet. So get creative with your play and see where the activity takes you.
3. Hedgehogs
This activity is a fun way to develop your child’s pincer grip, hand-eye coordination and focus. First, get your child to mold a ball of playdough and tease out a nose shape for the hedgehog’s face.
Now get them to use lollipop sticks to add prickles to their hedgehog’s back. You could even use real twigs and start the activity with a nature walk to collect clean, dry sticks to use. As your child grows, you can use smaller sticks and smaller hedgehogs to keep developing their hand-eye coordination.
