Winter Olympics Playdough Fun

The kids and I have been watching the Winter Olympics. And now..... we have been re-enacting skiing and snowboarding with playdough for the last few days. This has been so popular we ended up making two batches of playdough – one of the batches was a special super-white playdough.

Super-White Winter Wonderland Playdough Recipe

• 2 cups of corn flour
• Half cup of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 1 cup of boiling water
• Silver glitter (optional)
• Mix together, tip out onto a floured surface and knead until you get a smooth consistency. Add more water if it is too dry. Add more flour if it is too wet.

Boo made some silvery, winter wonderland rocks to go with her winter wonderland scene. To make these – squeeze a dollop of white pva glue on the top of some garden stones. Cover with silver glitter and let them dry. Pretty simple and very sparkly!!!

Paddle pop sticks played a huge role in our winter wonderland play. They were skis, snowboards, poles and the walls and roof of Cakey's snow cave. We also used them to hold up flags, bells and our mini bunting. I made some mini paper bunting by cutting out triangles from folded paper and gluing each triangle on a string. We attached the string to paddle pop sticks and stuck them up in the playdough.

The kids played all sorts of games with these little Winter Olympic scenes... Cakey enjoyed the sensory play aspect and Boo enjoyed letting her imagination do all the work in pretend play.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Lavender playdough

Ah playdough how I love you, we have been experimenting with a few variations to our usual super simple playdough recipe. We have tried peppermint, lemon and chocolate but my favourite so far is lavender. We collected some lavender from my aunt's garden and dried it in the sun. Boo had great fun crumbling it into the dough mix.

Lavender Playdough Recipe

• 2 cups of plain flour
• Half cup of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• Dried lavender
• 5 drops of lavender oil
• 1 and a third cups of boiling water mixed with purple food colouring (or a mix of pink and blue food colouring)

Basically throw it all in a bowl and mix it together, then knead it with a little extra flour until it is beautiful and smooth.

Boo played with our lavender playdough along with a bowl of buttons and some bottle tops. She turned them into some lovely little lavender cakes.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Peppermint Playdough

I wanted to give something to the kids from our mothers group. I am so grateful to still be meeting up with this wonderful group of mums and kids after 4 and a half years. As I enjoy making playdough and the kids love playing with playdough I decided to make some Christmas peppermint playdough. (I am also grateful to all you readers out there – I wish I could give you all some peppermint playdough)

I make a no-cook playdough. Here is the recipe:

Playdough Recipe

• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 1 and a quarter cups of boiling water mixed with your food colouring of choice
• 6 drops of peppermint oil

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the vegetable oil and peppermint oil. Add the food colouring to the boiling water and then add it to the flour mixture, stir with a spoon. Once the mixture has cooled enough to touch, knead the dough on a floured surface. If the mixture is too soft add more flour, if it is too firm add more water.

I made three batches of playdough (red, light green and white) to make six gift packs. For the white I replaced the plain flour with corn flour. This makes a really white white. When I use corn flour I reduce the amount of water to one cup.

I divided each batch of playdough into six portions and individually wrapped them in cling wrap. Each gift pack contained a portion of red, green and white playdough with a few accessories – red and white patty pans, pom poms and two candy canes. The whole lot was wrapped in clear cellophane and tied up with a pipecleaner.

Playdough makes such a nice gift. If you want more playdough ideas have a look at my Playdough Magic Pinterest board. And you can find all of our Christmas craft right here.

A few more playdough ideas:
Minty Candy Cane Scented playdough Christmas ornaments from Learning 4 kids
A gift of homemade lemon sparkle playdough from An Everyday Story
Woody playscene with pine scented playdough from Small Potatoes
Gingerbread playdough by The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Christmas salt dough ornaments

We have been making a lot of our own Christmas decorations lately... mainly because it is something fun to do. I actually went out to the Christmas shops to buy some new decorations but they were all a bit cheap and nasty. In the end I didn't bother, I think we will just stick to making them.

Speaking of making Christmas decorations we have made some fabulous salt dough ornaments. I have found a new recipe for salt dough and I like it. It is based on a recipe I found at Mum in the Madhouse, but I have adapted it a little.

Salt Dough Recipe
2 cups of table salt (I find cooking salt too coarse)
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of oil
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of corn flour
Approximately half to one cup of cold water (during the kneading process)

Instructions: Combine the salt and one cup of water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, let the salty mixture bubble for a few minutes while stirring. I thought this process might dissolve the salt completely but it didn't. After a few minutes take the saucepan off heat and add flours and oil. Stir vigorously. This is when I looked at my mixture dubiously – it was not a dough. I poured the whole lot on to the kitchen bench. When it had cooled the kids helped me with the kneading. I slowly added cold water to the mix until we had a good dough consistency. Once you have turned your dough into shapes or sculptures bake in the oven at low heat (150ºC or 300ºF) for 3 to 4 hours. Keep an eye on it so the dough does not burn.

The mixture after cooking the salt and adding in the flour

Let's knead

Once the dough looked like a dough I divided it in half. I rolled out a portion for each kid and they cut out their Christmas shapes. Cakey poked a hole in each shape with a straw so we can string them up on the Christmas tree. I carefully laid each shape on a lined baking tray and we baked the dough in the oven for 4 hours at a low temperature. If your kids won't wait for hours to get their hands on their salt dough try Rainy Day Mum's quick microwave salt dough.

Making the shapes, I dusted some flour on the bench to stop the dough sticking

Our salt dough shapes after baking in the oven for 4 hours

We didn't get to paint our salt dough until the next day. Every single piece was painted and glitter was added too. I have stored the ornaments away in an air tight container ready for the Christmas tree. These salt dough ornaments are going to look fantastic! (Note: if you have issues with humidity you might want to seal with with a varnish as recommended by Learning 4 kids).

You can find all our Christmas craft ideas here.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to The Kids Co-op, Kids Get Crafty, It's Playtime and Tuesday Tots

Ice cream shop

 

I set up a playdough ice cream shop for Boo's beach themed 2nd birthday party. I covered our coffee table with turquoise blue wrapping paper. This looks lovely and it also stops rogue playdough getting stuck between the timber boards. I made three types of playdough ice cream:

• Chocolate playdough – 1.5 cups of plain flour, half cup of cocoa, half cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, 2 tablespoons of oil, 1 and a third cups of boiling water. Chocolate playdough smells amazing but it tastes like playdough so the kids won't eat it.
• Light pink playdough (strawberry) – 2 cups of corn flour, half cup of salt, 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar, 2 tablespoons of oil, 1 and a third cups of boiling water with a tiny splash of pink food colouring. Corn flour makes super white dough with a lovely texture.
• Turquoise blue playdough with gold glitter (blueberry) – This was my favourite, again I used this recipe from The Imagination Tree.

I stored each 'flavour' of ice cream in a plastic tub and added some ice cream scoops and spoons. I found cheap little takeaway espresso cups for the kids to scoop the ice cream into. To add a little sparkle, I provided bowls of shiny sequins for ice cream sprinkles. And of course, I always add a collection of sticks to all playdough activity.

Our ice cream shop banner

The ice cream shop also had a cash register and a banner advertising 'ice cream'. The girls and I had made the banner a few days back – gluing together paper cones and colourful scoops of ice cream on one long sheet of paper. This was a fun collage that made use of old wrapping paper.

At the party many delicious looking ice creams were created and the kids had fun!

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali

Four fun days with playdough

We have been stuck indoors for most of the week because of the horrible weather. Thankfully, the playdough pledge (Nurturestore, The Imagination Tree, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots) has kept us busy... as I decided we would make a different batch of dough each day for four days.

Day 1

I set up salt dough for our mothers' group playdate. We used Nurturestore's recipe from her free playdough ebook. The kids loved it and loaded up the baking tray full of their sculptures. I baked them in the oven for 3 hours. We spent the rainy afternoon driving around the neighbourhood delivering salt dough treasures to their owners.

Concentrating on salt dough

Baked and painted

Day 2

We made some green glitter playdough. I used the easy no cook recipe from The Imagination Tree and added some blue glitter. Cakey decided the glittery playdough looked like seaweed. She made an underwater scene on a bed of orange playdough. Boo was content sticking blue sticks into her portion of glitter playdough.

Cakey's underwater scene with seaweed, treasure and people

Boo didn't let that green stick stay

Day 3

I made my first batch of scented playdough. I added a few drops of peppermint oil into the playdough mix. I divided the batch up and coloured one half pink (for Cakey) and the other blue (for Boo). The kids liked the minty smell. They made playdough cupcakes and decorated them with sequins, beads and candles. Later that evening they made peppermint cars with their dad.

Peppermint cupcakes

Peppermint cars

Day 4

The sun finally came out so I decided to make something a little bit different – cloud dough. I used the recipe from Flight of Whimsy, I did not have baby oil so I used olive oil instead. Cloud dough is fabulous stuff. Boo in particular loved the cloud dough – squeezing it in her fingers to form lumps then smashing the lumps apart.

My youngest one LOVED cloud dough

Cloud dough cakes

If this is your first visit to at home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along through our facebook page or subscribe via email or RSS. Cheers Ali