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Home » Activities » How to Make Homemade Playdough

How to Make Homemade Playdough

This post may contain affiliate links. See my disclosure .

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

homemade playdough ingredients

Stir ingredients before heating:

Homemade playdough

_Heat ingredients on medium:

How to Make Homemade Playdough
Making homemade playdough

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

Homemade Playdough

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:

Homemade Playdough Recipe

_The color “pink” via strawberry playdough:

How to Make Homemade 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

Tagged With: Infant & Toddler, Sensory

About Marnie Craycroft

Marnie hails from Maine where she spent summers buried in sand and winters buried in snow. She is the daughter of a nearly four decade veteran of the public school systems. Teaching has always been a part of her life. She founded Carrots Are Orange in 2010.

Carrots Are Orange is a Montessori learning and living website for parents and teachers.

Marnie graduated from Wesleyan University in 1999 with a BA in Economics. She spent nearly a decade working in investment management. In 2006, she earned her MA in business from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

Marnie moved to the west coast in 1999 and currently lives in Boulder with her husband and three sons. She is Montessori trained. Her work has been featured on Apartment Therapy, Buzzfeed, PBS Kids, BabyCenter, the Melissa & Doug blog, Huffington Post, and WhattoExpect.com. Besides writing, passions include running (usually after her three sons), photography, and outdoor adventures.

Fine Motor Sensory Activity for Toddlers »

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