March 16th: play dough

Olivia is in school. So old. Junior Kindergarten. School is so different now from my childhood: no desks, no chalkboard. The class is a mix between daycare and school and the room is set up into "centres" based around different activities. One of the requirements for the parents of the 26 students in her class, is that each one has to take a turn making play dough for the class. My turn came up the week of March 18th. I had no idea play dough is so easy to make! This homemade recipe would be entirely safe for children (cough Sadie cough) to put in their mouths, because it is made with a few real food ingredients, plus a whole lot of food colouring (not so good). Olivia and I tasted it just to see what it was like. HOLY GROSS! I spit it back out, it was that bad. Salty salty salty. But still, safe.


Play Dough

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 tbsp oil
2 cups water
food colouring

Mix together dry ingredients in large saucepan. Add the oil and mix to combine.

In measuring cup, combine food colouring and water. Stir into dry ingredients.

Cook on low heat for 3-5 minutes, stirring, until it thickens to play dough consistency.

Remove from heat onto floured board and knead.

Store in a covered container or ziplock bag.

Makes one big ball of play dough.


Grace requested I make play dough with sparkles in it. I decided not to, because, having never made it before, I didn't want to mess with the recipe the first time. I think sparkles would work though: I would add them to the water mixture. This would, however, make it inadvisable to eat the play dough.

Mix dry ingredients in large pot.

Mix food colouring with water.
I had no idea how much food colouring to use so I just kept squirting
until the water was so dark blue it was almost black.

Turns out lots of food colouring is good,
because it really lightens up once all the ingredients are mixed together.
Cook on stovetop. This part gets really tiring for the arm.

It was completely unintentional that Olivia's dress and the play dough matched.
Olivia is dressed like it is 30° outside, not the middle of the coldest, snowiest March since the year she was born.