dohlightful

'What shall we do today?'
'Can we make play doh mammy?'
'Why not!'
So this morning we donned our aprons and rolled up our sleeves and the Salt Doh fun began.
I always get my youngest daughter to tell me the quantities as I read out the ingredients to her. We do this whenever we are baking or reading from a recipe/instruction list.

Salt Doh Recipe
3 cups of plain flour
3 tablespoons Cream of tartar
3 tablespoons of sunflower oil (however I use baby oil as it smells lovely and is good for the skin- and to be honest who hasn't got a bottle of baby oil that they bought to use on the kids, but found they couldn't pick them up as they were to greasy and just put the bottle back in the cupboard?)
1 1/2  cups of table salt
Food colouring

(also any of the following can be added- glitter, essential oils (lavender is nice))

I place the cup inside a large bowl and give my daughter the bag of flour and a spoon. I got her to fill the cup with the flour (and because the cup is already in the bowl it doesn't matter if she misses!) and do that 3 times. Then she used the same method to add the salt. Next I gave her the measuring spoon and she measured out the 3 tbsp of cream of tartar and held the spoon whilst I poured in the baby oil. I half filled a second bowl with water and she filled her cup and poured it into the bowl with the flour, cream of tartar, oil and salt. I gave her a whisk and she mixed the ingredients together. After that mammy was allowed a little go too.

Next we poured half the mixture into another bowl as we wanted 2 different colours. To one bowl we added yellow food colouring and to the second we added green food colouring and a couple of drops of lavender oil.

There are 2 different methods of cooking I always use the microwave as it is quicker, but you can also use the hob.

I start off by giving the mixture 1 minute on full power in the microwave, then stirred it (removing any crispy/hard bit that appear around the side of the bowl as you don't want the hard bits in the doh). I continued heating, stirring and removing hard bits at 30 second intervals. Once the doh started to come away from the edge of the bowl and form a ball, I then continued at 15 sec intervals until I could touch the doh and it was not gooey or sticking to my fingers. Caution the doh is very hot at this point, do not give to the child. I allowed the doh to cool for about 20 minutes, kneading occasionally otherwise it may stay hot in the middle.

After a little wander to Lake Meadows park in Billericay to feed the ducks we came home and the doh fun began. Using plastic kids knives, plastic pizza cutters and rolling pins my daughter created a Rapunzel (inspired by the DVD they watched at the weekend as a treat- however it took a lot to explain the stabbing bit- Walt Disney really have gone down in my estimation). Then we got out all of the play doh equipment that we have accumulated over the years and we spent a lovely afternoon sitting in the garden making night garden and dora shapes.

If you wanted to extend this activity you could dry the things you make in the airing cupboard and paint them once dry. The girls really enjoy doing this.