Country Kids Day Nursery | Playdough Recipe
websitebuilder • March 29, 2020
‘This is how’: We make playdough!
Many of you may be thinking 'How am I going to entertain my child whilst schools and nurseries are closed?' and we totally understand. We’d like to share some of our secrets with you on simple things we do to engage busy bodies in nursery. One thing we make sure is readily available every day is play dough. We love it, the children love it.. it's a win win situation! In nursery, we encourage the children to be as independent as possible, so they like to mix the ingredients themselves. This allows them to have the opportunity to look at measures and follow a recipe with an adult.
You will need:
- 2 Cups Plain Flour
- 1/2 Cup of Salt
- 2 Cups of Boiling Water
- 4 Teaspoons of Cream of Tartar
- 4 Tablespoons of Oil
- Food Colouring (Optional)
- Food Essence (Optional)
Instructions:
- Boil Kettle
- Measure out Flour, Oil, Salt and Cream of Tartar into a pan. Mix together until a sticky, lumpy mixture is created.
- Measure boiled water into a separate container. It is important here that should you wish to add food colouring, this is added to the water. Mix in together.
- Add water and food colouring to the pan.
- Add in essence to the pan should you wish. Favourites in nursery include lavender, lemon and orange!
- Slowly add heat to the pan and keep stirring. The mixture will become very thick and heavy to mix. Keep mixing until you have formed a ball of dough.
- Let the play dough cool down, and enjoy endless hours of fun!
Hints and Tips:
- Singing '10 fat sausages' whilst rolling out play dough in to sausages encourages use of language. The children love to shout 'POP!' and 'BANG'. Rolling out sausages requires concentration and strengthens up their hand and finger muscles. 'How many sausages do we have, how many more do we need?' will prompt number language.
- Adding pasta to play dough encourages children to use their imaginations. Will they create prickly hedgehogs with uncooked spaghetti or will they create their favourite dinosaurs using Penne Pasta (should you be able to find any in the shops!).
- Shape recognition. As play dough is so easy to mould, you could create simple shapes such as circles and squares. Without directly asking the children 'What shape have I made?', why not leave them a little bit of time to see if they tell you what you have made. If they don't prompt the names of the shapes, why not try asking 'Ooh look at my square, I wonder if you could make a square like mine?'. The more you repeat the word, the more children will pick up which shape it is. For older children, you could make a sphere or a cuboid, and talk about these being 3D shapes.
- Play dough that is contained can last up to 3 weeks. This could be either in a tin or wrapped with cling foil.
We hope that this has been helpful and that you enjoy a little bit of peace and quiet whilst they play!
- The Country Kids Team x
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