We love to play with play dough at our house. It is a great way to keep little hands busy for a few minutes while I can get other things done, you know like all the Mom jobs that go faster without help! Not only is this activity fun for the kids, they will also be strengthening the muscles in their hands and preparing their grip for so many other things.
This easy and fast recipe is nothing special, I am sure that you can find several like this in a quick search, EXCEPT we add essential oils to aid in the activity we are preforming.
Want to know more????
All my Young Living family will know these oils well, if you would like to learn more about the blends below, click here.
Add 10-20 drops of Stress Away if this is for an afternoon, rest time activity.
Add 10-15 drops of Highest Potential, Brain Power, or Awaken Essential Oils if this is an activity before school begins for the day or before a test.
Add 10-20 drops of Thieves if you are sharing with others at playtime, keep those immune systems strong and keep the play dough clean from all the yucky hands.
We have even added Panaway after a big bump on the head and we needed some down time with benefits, the boys played and enjoyed the amazing healing power of essential oils and never noticed what was happening. I love that! Boys don’t always let their Moms dote over them.
Recently we have added colors to our game. I am not a fan of artificial colors AT ALL. We avoid them at all cost, not in our food or drinks or chocolate- companies hide dye in everything!!!! That is a whole other topic and I will go there soon, but for today we are talking about the vegetable based colors we bought from Amazon. We decided that using these colors for play dough and experiments would be perfect and I have to say I agree, it will be fun!
The first step is to boil 1 cup of water. While that is on the stove, I prepared the flour, cream of tartar, salt, and vegetable oil. Once the water boiled, I add it to the bowl of ingredients and mixed. It only took a few rotations of the spoon to see the texture set up. This is when I added the food coloring. A few more stirs and it is ready to transfer to the parchment paper, I don’t have wax today, and let it cool just a minute. Then I added the drops of essential oil to the dough and I kneed it for a few minutes. Today we used Stress Away and I did about 15 drops. We let it cool for a few minutes and then pass it over to play. Easy as pie!
Today we added Green, so many drops of green… I should have counted, but that is not my style at all! Ha! The color is not very dark, but added just what we needed to make it different.
We don’t have any fancy play dough toys, a rolling pin and a butter knife is really all you need to let your imagination run free. Today the play lasted about 45 minutes, total Mom score and involved no physical interaction, just moral support and vocal suggestions when requested. Meaning I said, “You could make an J for Joseph.” and the little would say, “Ok!” I love this kind of play, unscripted and all self driven.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this will last for months in a glass jar, smell and all!
Helping Families Grow 