another gift of play dough

This one is a muffin with candy top and birthday candles.

all for me

She made me a play dough bouquet of goodness....all the flowers she could find, straws (the bendy kind...she pointed out to me), honeycombed fruit picks, glitter, cookie presses, and play dough...of course.

spring play dough fixings

We love a good play dough set up! For spring, we pulled out a thrifted divided tray and filled it with bracelets from the dollar store, wee stampers and cookie stamps, silicone cupcake liners (also thrifted), plastic flower picks from Daiso, and a flower set from Toobz! This was out for three weeks, the children were having so much fun with it!

misadventures in gluten-free play dough making

I tried, I really did, but as far as dough goes, I failed (well, sort of, at least in this instance.) I picked up some coconut flour and thought if I added cocoa powder to it and cooked it up like regular play dough it would work....I thought wrong.

I added the flour, then the cocoa, some cornstarch, and less water than usual and it looked like it might ball up but it didn't. It got too fluid and goopy so I added cornmeal and nothing happened. At this point I had about 6 cups of crumbly stuff that I was told smelled divine but what could I do to salvage it? Ooh! I know...turn it into a microwave mug cake...um....yeah, that bombed too.

Rather than admit defeat, I popped the whole crumbly mess into a container and marveled at the texture which was silly smooth and cool even if it wasn't doughy. The next day at school, I dumped the whole crumbly mess on top of the table, added a few cookie cutters, and empty heart shaped candy boxes and called it a day.

It appears the kiddos loved it...

Go figure.

Coming up, the successful gluten-free playdough recipe I rocked. Stay tuned!

playdough with natural elements

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 For our week of The Listening Walk I whipped up a batch of cornstarch clay to mix things up at our play dough table. To go along with the simple beauty of the cay I added a tray of natural elements such as rosemary, lavender, small pebbles, and shells.

Small squares of cardboard were also set out to use as place settings for the clay and to keep the area looking neutral and natural. Our wooden rolling pins got a lot of use as did our small mortar and pestle.

 

The children especially loved using this cookie stamp (we used it without the device, just the stamps) to make their own natural cookies to share and to sell. We had a very productive bake shop going on!

fun with rainbow dough

If you haven't noticed by now I am a bit of a rainbow freak. I love using the rainbow in the classroom to teach color, sequencing, and pre-reading skills. If you think about it, understanding the order of the colors in the rainbow from left to right is a precursor to reading. Plus, in nature and science, the order of the colors is always the same.

 I used my favorite stove top dough recipe (which you can find here) and made a single batch for each color. I used liquid watercolor (so much happy color to be had) to tint the dough. For set up, I placed a small ball (about half a batch of each so that each class could experience the colors separately before they got mixed to that glorious shade of brown that dough tends to get when all the colors are mixed) of each color on top of a sheet of blue construction paper that had been laminated with clear contact paper. I placed the dough colors in rainbow order.

 

Next to the happy dough, I set out a collection of dyed craft sticks and cubes. The craft sticks and cubes were purchased at a few different craft stores. I had been collecting them gradually just for this project (inspiration came from fun at home with kids) as wood pieces tend to be a bit on the pricier side of things. Thank goodness for sales!

The children oohed and aahed when they saw the happy set up. Weirdly, the colors remained unmixed for two weeks. Mostly they stacked the colors on top of each other then jabbed various sticks and cubes into the mess. A few of the children color sorted all the bits and created ice cream cones and rainbows even. We actually used this dough all the way through the end of the year though by that time it was a lovely shade of rust. The craft sticks and cubes visited many areas of the classroom as lollipops, tickets, money, magic cubes, and more. The children had a lot of fun playing with our rainbow dough!

flowers and play dough

This project is not really that different from our flower arranging center yet the children play with it differently. They arrange and display their bouquets and work those fine motors to fill the pails with play dough. We used the same playdough as we did for Monday's flower play. The appearance of the arranging looks different so the children approach it as a different activity, it's really cool and super pretty!

a {floral} invitation to play

A lot fo flower cookies were made. We're talking oodles of them. After the cookies were" eaten" the children began making pizzas. If you keep the stems of your flowers you can reattach and put them to some other use. The dough was homemade and tinted green with plants from my garden. The flowers came from the dollar store...$3 worth...not bad, not bad at all.

beaded play dough clouds

Our children created these awesome beaded play dough clouds from two different types of homemade dough (I was inspired by this lovely cloud from love from ginger). I had originally whipped up a batch of this cornstarch clay but when they wanted to make more and we had run out of the clay, they used our regular old classroom dough with satisfying results. We used these cookie cutters and your average pony beads. Everything was left to air-dry for a few days (a few of our fluffier clouds took a week or so).

 

The children also made a few clouds without beads. They used the tips of our paintbrushes to punch holes near the top of their clouds. Once their clouds had hardened they painted them with classroom tempera paint and added a hefty dose of glitter. We love glitter! I threaded the clouds with blue embroidery floss and then we taped them to our window frame in the classroom to enjoy.

three bears play dough play

 I made a batch of cinnamon scented play dough  and added a few bear accessories added for fun. I picked up the bears from etsy seller Clickity Clack and highly recommend them.

 

 

 

 

I added some oats as well as rolling pins, muffin pans, cookie cutters and measuring cups. The children really enjoyed baking porridge cookies and pie.

the three billy goats gruff: pet trolls

For our week of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, along with all the bridge building and storytelling, we got to making and painting trolls. This project may look familiar to you as it is one often used by teachers to promote fine motor skills and use up older play dough which is exactly why I decided to do it and it fit right in.

 

The children loved making trolls out of the dough and random scraps of feathers, toothpicks, and pipe cleaners. If you do this project, you can have your children help you prep materials ahead of time by working those scissors skills cutting pipe cleaners and/or straws. Set up the supplies in a muffin tin for a pretty presentation and make sure to use a paper plate underneath for easy transport to a safe place for drying. The plate will also catch any bits and bobs that fall off. If you have a kiddo who really loves glue, place a sheet of wax paper on top of the plate beforehand.

 

The glue was also very popular and was used not only to anchor on googly eyes but to add layers and layers and layers of more dough. They took a few days and the children were ecstatic to take home their pet trolls.

making play dough in the classroom

 I often forget to make new play dough for the classroom but luckily we have a cabinet with all the ingredients we need and a microwave for heating up water to pull it all together. Often we will mix away with no recipe other than each child who is present getting to add a scoop or two of each ingredient at hand. As we work on our recipe I use vocabulary to enhance the process and now each child clamors to be the one who gets to level it off, or knead the dough.

 We use flour, salt, oil, cornstarch and water in our dough. If I remember to bring in cream of tartar we add that as a preservative but otherwise hte cornstarch adds a nice smooth feel to the happy mess.

 This batch here was for a week of faux snow play and so while it did not have any color added, it did need a glitter boost. Everyone loves a turn shaking glitter into the mix.

 I need to find a big mixing bowl for the classroom. I keep an eye out at the thrifts but until then we use whatever we have on hand. Sometimes a bucket, other times this aluminum tray. We began with a bouquet of wooden spoons but many of them seem to have gone into hiding. I need to find more of those as well.

 The children love making their own play dough and will often play with it more than usual when they have had a hand in the making. The sparkles in this batch made the dough all shimmery while the cornstarch made it smooth and pliable. This snowman was the first thing that got made that morning.

 To add to the play there were small clear, blue,  and white flat backed jewels; glittery styrofoam balls,snowflake shaped cookie cutters, and a handful of classroom made stamps.

We made the stamps from a pack of sticky-backed foam snowflakes and a handful of our play blocks. Later, our large foam snowflake stampers made an appearance and were a complete hit!

our play dough chocolate shop

A happy batch of play dough, tool for rolling and cuttings, an assortment of beads and jewels, and a trio of empty candy boxes makes for some delightful play! Tikes for blurry photos, but they move so quickly you never know if yer going to get a good shot or not!

valentine play dough fun

 

 

I always have play dough available in the classroom. Often, we make it in the morning using a no cook recipe that is mostly made up as I never write things down. It has all the usual suspects;  2 cups flour, 1 cup salt, 1/4 cup corn starch (makes it so smooth!), 2 T cream of tartar, 2 T oil, liquid watercolor, and about 1/2 cup of hot water. The measurements are not exactly exact when you let three-year-olds take the lead but it is always fun and it is always a learning process. While I would have delighted in making up a batch of pink dough for Valentine's Day, we had a perfectly good batch of aqua colored dough that came about when the children mixed their blue dough and their green dough together. Add a bunch of heart shapes and cookie cutters and voila! Valentine's Dough!

  

Perfectly good save for the fact that it kept getting more and more gooey week by week (hey, it's still good!).  I think maybe someone was experimenting with water and well since school is always a learning process, I added a cup of flour to the table for the children to knead into the dough. We call it "working the dough". I love hearing their little voices call out that they are working the dough!

  

 

This was the first time I added basic flour to the table. Some of the children spent more time playing with the flour than the dough. Across the table I even had a batch of Valentine's Day cloud dough available but I think the sensation of the flour on the table was a new and unique experience. I remember how much I loved the feeling of flour on my hands when I helped my mother bake and so we added a bit more flour just because.

  

One of the children discovered she could make heart shapes in the flour with a cookie cutter. She also discovered she could scrape and scoop the flour with the cutter as well. It was all very exciting!

 

Every time I passed the dough table I was greeted with a new sight. One of my kiddos rolled the dough out as thin as possible and stuck these festive picks into it. They kept falling over and it took a few tries for him to realize the dough needed to be a a tad bit thicker. All that flour made the dough super fluffy and not crumbly. Putting it away at the end of the day found me joyfully rolling it into balls and squishing it into the bag, you know...to dust it off, of course!