How to Make Homemade Playdough

Making playdough is ridiculously easy and actually quite fun! I have made loads of playdough for my boys. It is very easy to do and takes very little time, I promise.

Playdough is a great sensory exercise. Adding color, smell and texture adds to the sensory experience for your child. My favorite recipe is from My Montessori Journey.

The only modification I make to this recipe is adding glycerin to the mix to make the dough a bit more “doughy” if that makes sense. It stretches a bit more. I add about 1 tablespoon.

How to Make Homemade Playdough

Stir ingredients before heating:

_Heat ingredients on medium:

Stir constantly for approximately five minutes until all “wet” ingredients look “dry”:

So far I have made peppermint/green, strawberry/pink, and chocolate/brown play dough experimenting as I go along. I have big plans for my son’s 2nd birthday in a few weeks and just maybe, I am going to go nuts and make some red, white and blue play dough to celebrate independence day.

Fun Playdough Ideas:

• Use cocoa for chocolate. Smells awesome (I almost ate it for breakfast this morning) and adds natural color.
• Extracts are the way to go with adding smell. Try peppermint, strawberry, root beer, lemon, orange, vanilla, raspberry and cherry. Food coloring is easy to add to these flavors.
• Essential oils work too. Try lavender and add a little blue and red coloring to make purple!
• Add glitter!

In addition to these wonderful sensory activities, you can use play dough to teach basic concepts. We make bear tracks and then stamp them with the letter “B”, for example, or we use a fish cookie cutter and mark it with the letter “F”.

Here is an elephant:

_The color “pink” via strawberry playdough:

This playdough is not edible. There are edible recipes that I have yet to try. I will share them with you as soon as I do.

Happy playing!

Marnie