Make playdough at home

How to make silly putty at home (Play dough with Space Theme)

How to make playdough at home? Homemade playdough

This page includes homemade playdough that I prepared for my daughter under the space theme. Playdough is one of the most enjoyable ways to develop children’s creativity.

Your children can start playing with homemade playdough from 18 months. Even if they cannot shape it until three years of age, touching the playdough, pinching, rolling or cutting it is enough. You can give cookie cutters with different shapes or patterned objects to the children at this age group and ask them to create different shapes by pressing them on playdough.Playing with playdough develops children’s sense of place.

They can learn that every material has a special structure and materials can change form. Children can give shape to homemade playdough from three years of age. They will wish for keeping the works they have done and show them to their friends or people around them. ? Displaying the works created by children and keeping them will evoke a sense of success in children and enable them to feel confident.

It would be a good idea to place a shelf or a cabinet in their room on which children can display their works. As they grow older, they can create more detailed and complex shapes and form new color combinations by mixing colorful playdoughs. You can help them develop their creativity in this period by giving them different materials like pug or paper-mache. They even can make necklaces, bracelets and trinkets with some help. They will enjoy putting them on or giving them as present. Along with developing their imagination, playdough;

• Supports the development of hand and finger muscles.
• Provides hand-eye coordination.
• Help children learn the concepts of hard and soft.
• Can be used as an enjoyable way to learn shapes and colors.
• Can be seen as a way of children to express themselves. It can help us understand children’s inner world by talking to them about the shapes they give to playdough.

You must make sure that little children are not alone while playing the playdough.

You can also support your children’s development with silly putties that you can prepare at home. Have fun 🙂

Homemade Playdough Recipe

1. Recipe (without boiling)

• 3 glasses of flour
• 1 glass of water
• 2 table spoons of oil
• ¼ glass of salt
• Food dye (if you want to color it)

You can also use vegetable juice to color it. You can take a look at our article about finger paint out of vegetable juice to learn which vegetable to use to get which color.

First, mix flour and oil in a container. Then, add water slowly and knead it until it gets dough consistency. If the dough becomes too fluid, you can arrange its consistency by adding flour little by little. If you are going to prepare one colored playdough, you can add all of food dye you have chosen and continue kneading.

If you want to prepare different colored playdough, cut it into small pieces and knead each piece with the food dye you have chosen. If you use powder food dye, you can continue kneading after mixing it with water to color the playdough more easily. It is also possible to obtain different colors by mixing different food dyes.

2.Recipe (By boiling)

• 1 glass of flour
• 1 glass of water
• Half glass of salt
• 2 table spoons of oil
• 2 table spoons of cream of tartar (You can get it from herbalists. If you can’t find it, you can use apple cider vinegar instead.)
• Food dye

Put all of the materials except for food dye into a container and boil them until the dough gathers in the middle and gets separated from the pot. When it gathers in the middle and gets separated from the pot, take it off the stove. If you want to prepare one-colored playdough, knead all of the dough with that food dye. To get different colored playdough, cut it into small pieces and knead each piece with desired food dye. You can also use vanilla, cacao, cinnamon, mint, rose water, flavored oils to give a nice scent to your playdoug.

In order to protect homemade playdough you have prepared from drying, you can keep it in plastic storage boxes or in glass jars.

We wanted to use this homemade playdough recipe for our space theme.

After preparing our playdough according to the recipe above, we sprinkled yellow, grey, blue silvers on it and kneaded it. You can obtain more shiny appearance by adding purple and red silvers.

Our stars and stones

Our homemade playdough tools

You can make an enjoyable space activity for young age groups by preparing a presentation like this. They activate their finger muscles while using those tools ? You can take a look at our planets activity that we prepared out of homemade playdough from our web site.