Modeling with Toddlers. Playdough. Wonderful Recipe

I can’t say when we would have started modeling with Soniya if I had not noticed playdough in a children’s store…

Our daughter (16 mo old) and I are sitting down on the floor and I open the box joyfully anticipating the reaction of Soniya. A smile of amazement appears on the child’s face and the next moment the eyes of our little one are already cheerfully looking at me. And at that moment I am breaking into a smile as if in my life too something has happened for the first time

I am tearing a small piece of the playdough and making a sausage from it. New forms and images are born before Soniya! In a moment, she herself is making a sausage (I have not expected that such a little child is capable of doing it! ). And here she’s got a ball! I showed Soniya that the pieces can be of different sizes, that the balls can be joined in a “chain” or placed one onto another. We made lots of balls (and something like them)!

And then I showed our daughter how to make “plates” from balls. If there are plates, we need cups. Something should lie on the plate. Let it be the fruit which Soniya already knows: an apple. In a moment, the apple loses its stick in Soniya’s hands but after pressing it she returns it in its place – the apple has got a leaf!.. The forms are being born, the forms are being changed…

Together with Soniya, we made an elephant’s head – I showed our daughter (using her hands) how to turn a ball in different figures with your fingers.

Now we turn to modeling very often. Yesterday we learnt that thanks to this activity she can also make cottage cheese pancakes now! And she is only 16 months old!

The obvious advantage of the cooked playdough is that it hasn’t got any smell and it is softer than the one from the store. The bought playdough is more plastic.

Cooked Playdough for Modeling with Children. Wonderful Recipe

Below you can find a fantastic recipe of playdough which I got several years ago from a wonderful mummy Sia. As she comments on, “It is cheap to make, eatable and lasts months!!!!!!! I made 2 kg for a party and we are still using it (that was in Feb and now is June!)”.

INGREDITENTS:

• ½ cup (2oz/50g) of cooking salt
• 1 cup (4oz/100g) of plain flour
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1 cup (8floz/200ml) of water
• 1 tablespoon of oil
• Food colouring if desired

DIRECTIONS:

• Mix the dry ingredients in a saucepan.
• Mix the water, oil and food colouring. Add them to the dry ingredients.
• Cook on medium heat, stirring until the mixture forms a doughy consistency and begins to come away from the sides of the pan.
• Remove it from the heat and allow it to cool slightly.
• Turn it onto a floured board and knead it.
• Store in an airtight container or plastic wrap in the refrigerator.

(Sia did not put it into the fridge, just in an airtight container, and it lasted aaaaages)

I bought the green playdough in the children’s store and the yellow playdough was made by me according to Sia’s recipe

When I cooked the playdough using this recipe, I used turmeric for colouring. Do you know that in India women use turmeric “for beauty” (making masks)? So, it’s a good idea to work with cooked playdough for a mummy and her little one

An interesting idea! After you have made something from the playdough, you can dry it in the oven, colour it with paints and then lacquer it. For example, you can make the child’s hand- and footprint. Safe and ecological!

Anastasia

Illustrations to the article:

Photos by the author

You can read this article in Russian here.