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!