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!

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! 

holiday play dough fun

 

 

My co-teacher whipped up a batch of gingerbread playdough for the kiddos to enjoy while I brought in a bag of tiny bows. We piled it all onto a thrifted tray (my magic place) with as many holiday cookie cutters as we could find and let the play begin!

what's with the cream of tartar?

Cream of Tartar, originally uploaded by Cinara's Place.

I just wanted to do a wee bit of clarification for you folks out there who want to whip up a batch of play dough but don't have any cream of tartar.

Guess what? You don't need it! Adding cream of tartar to your play dough assists it a wee bit in adding volume and elasticity, and it acts as a preservative so that you can keep it around for a week or so as long as you store it in a sealed container in a cool, dry place (there is all kinds of science involved but I want to make dough NOW). Other than that, yer play dough is just find without it (though it might be a smidge grainy). So, go ahead, make some dough and have at it!**

**if your dough is on the sticky-side, add a little more flour, one tablespoon at a time and knead it in until you get a consistency you like. Doughs that are cooked on the stovetop tend to be top notch but a hot water dough or a simple flour and salt dough are easy to make. To skip the worry over cream of tartar all together, whip up a batch of cornstarch clay, the texture is fantastic!

Make your own berry scented play dough!

Homemade playdough is ridiculously easy to make and if you have cream of tartar on hand it will keep for up to six weeks!

What you need:

*1 cup flour

*1/2 cup salt

*2 T v. oil

*2 t cream of tartar

*1 cup water

*1 pack of powdered drink mix like kool-aid or wyler's

*medium sized stock pan

*wooden spoon

scrumdilly-do it:

Add all ingredients to your pan and mix over medium heat.

Remove from heat once mixture forms a ball in the center of the pan. If you like, add a bit o' glitter and stir. Dump your blob of dough onto a cutting board or cookie sheet to cool.

Once cool, hand it over to yer kidlets and let them play! Keep dough in a sealed container or zip bag for up to six weeks. No need to refrigerate.

If you don't have any cream of tartar, keep sealed in the refrigerator for a week. Salt dough recipe from Maryanne Kohl's nifty book titled Mudworks, I highly recommend it! It's available in Spanish also!