Sensory play is my go-to activity when my girls need something a little extra to keep them entertained (which lets be honest is most days haha). We tend to do some sort of sensory play everyday, be it dried rice, water play, or my favorite; playdough. We have some awesome playdough from Eco-kids in our store, but if like me, you like to make your own playdough sometimes, keep reading.
We tested a lot of different recipes, and officially settled on this one as our favorite. You can make it two ways depending on your preference, which I’ll break down below.
What you’ll need:
- 2 cups of all purpose flour
- ½ cup of salt
- 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 cup boiling water or cold if doing option 2
- Food coloring of choice (optional)
- Essential oils for smell (optional)
Option 1: No Cook
- In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. Make a hole in the middle of your dry ingredients and add the hot water, and oil. If you’d like your batch of playdough all the same color/smell, you can add a couple of drops of food coloring and/or essential oils now.
- Mix together until a dough forms. Let the dough cool for a couple of minutes and then knead it until it’s smooth (about 30 seconds).
- If you’re dividing the dough to color different colors/scents you can do this now.
Option 2: Cook
- Put all of the dry ingredients into a saucepan, add the wet ingredients and mix to combine, if you’d like the whole batch to be the same color you can add the food coloring with the wet ingredients, if not wait until later. You can also add essential oils at this time if you’re wanting the whole batch to have the same smell.
- Slowly bring the saucepan to heat (I set the heat to medium) stirring constantly. The dough will start to form as it warms, keep stirring until all the liquid has become dough.
- Take the saucepan off the heat and let the dough cool down. Once the dough is cool enough to handle, give it a knead until smooth. If you want to divide up your dough, and make it multiple different colors/scents, you can do this now.
That’s it! Our straight-forward recipe for super soft playdough. We have also made this playdough with only flour, instead of the cornstarch, and it’s great, but we find it extra soft when using the cornstarch. But if you don’t have any or would like to substitute flour instead, you totally can.
We find the dough will store well in an airtight container for a few months. It's best to get it out regularly and knead it to keep it soft. You can also add a little more oil to it if you find it gets stiff.
Playdough by itself is a blast, you can shape it, roll it, squish it! Endless fun! But if you’re looking for some tools to spruce up your playdough play, you can check out our fun selection of rollers, and stampers here.
Lizzie