Playdoh Creatures and My Favorite Playdoh Recipe

These little creatures were the result of me 

suggesting that we make snowmen with playdoh. 

Making snowmen was not a hit for a few potential reasons:

1) The playdoh was "black." The colors of the month were black and white and we had only made "black" thus far. We ran out of black food coloring and I didn't want to mix other colors and end up with a pile of poo playdoh. That happened. It was weird. So this was more gray than black. I try to use these opportunities to teach my children about colors beyond ROY-G-BIV. Like charcoal gray, army green, navy blue and camel. The best is when they get them confused. Navy green. Sheep. (because sheep and camels are similar :) ?


2) Balls are hard to make. Especially ones of different sizes and stack on top…forget about it. 


3) It was sunny and hadn't snow yet this year. 

So…… since kids are resourceful they made monsters which (not pictured) later became robots when placed on the forearm. 

I thought these little monsters were especially charming.

Oh, it was also someone's birthday. That's nothing new, though.

This is my personal favorite playdoh recipe. Yes, you have to cook it. 

It kind of sucks but cooked playdoh is much nicer and less messy. 

Playdoh

3 cups warm water

Food coloring

3 cups flour

1 Tablespoon Cream of Tarter

3/4 cup salt

3 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil

Combine warm water and food coloring and set aside. 
Combine all ingredients, add water mixture and stir. 
Cook over medium heat. Stir continuously until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes and pulls away from pan. (I tend to cook it longer- until it is a  ball of dough)
Remove from pan and knead. It's very hot so I knead it with a piece of wax paper on top. You could probably wait until it cools but that's boring. 
Store in an air-tight container, once it is completely cooled. 
Keep until it smells bad or look gross.


This is the recipe we use at work. There is no source, so I can't credit anyone. I'm sure there are others that are very similar but this one works so I haven't looked recently to compare it. 

a turkey baster does what?

I couldn't decide what to write about for my first official post. 

So I thought I'd make it easy on myself and post about something I already had pictures of! 
Here is a fun color-theory activity that I did in my classroom. The only thing I hate is cropping out my kids' cute faces since they're not actually my children :)

I just threw in the term 'color-theory' because it sounded impressive, especially for two year olds. Some of them got it but it was more than just "yellow and blue make green."

 (of course I was so excited when they could tell me that!)

Turkey Basters seemed like an obvious choice since it was November and we were talking about turkeys. While it makes sense to us as adults, there is very little connection between moistening a turkey while it cooks and a plastic toy that makes a huge mess when you squeeze it! 

Save your breath and skip the culinary lesson :)

I put bowls of yellow and blue paint in the sensory table. I mixed in a little water so it would be thin enough to go in and out of the baster. I gave them the basters and showed each of them how to squeeze it before putting it in the paint and then let go. It was tricky but they got the hang of it. 

Paint brushes were requested since we were in fact using paint. (so literal sometimes) Hands are always encouraged and are usually the painting tool of choice. We saved the green (more like teal) paint we made and will use it another day. 

Developmental Areas:

sensory, discovery, science, fine motor, cause and effect and more