Preschool Kindergarten
Fine Motor ActivitiesSensory Activities
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If your kids are the type to sit and play with play dough for hours on end, then today’s post is for you! This homemade color surprise play dough is squishy, exciting, and just plain fun!
Y’all, if you’ve been around the From ABCs to ACTs space long enough, you know that we’re big fans of play dough around here.
Like, huge fans, as evidenced by our printable play dough mats, dinosaur play dough set, and our fishing play dough invitation, just to name a few.
So, of course, with our second child starting preschool this past week, we had to allow at least a little play dough time. I mean, it’s kind of a preschool requirement.
Anywho, we pulled out all the stops for this one y’all. Working on practicing colors has never been more fun!
What looked like big white, colorless blobs, in the beginning, turned into an explosion of color and one very happy preschooler by the time we were done.
And making this awesome stuff? 10 minutes start to finish.
It doesn’t get much better than that.
Now, onto the directions!
To make your own color surprise play dough, you’ll need:
- 2 cups flour
- 2 cups water
- 2/3 cup salt
- 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- Food coloring
Add all of those ingredients to a large pot over medium/low heat and stir to combine.
Keep stirring until a dough forms and starts gathering around the spoon as you stir. Turn it out onto a cutting board or some wax paper and allow it to cool a bit before trying to touch it.
Now, this is a double batch of our favorite play dough recipe so it will make quite a bit. Once it’s cooled a bit and ready to work with, you’ll have your white play dough ready to go.
Take about 1/4 of it and split it evenly into 6 or 8 different sections, depending on how many colors you’d like to have. Add a few drops of food coloring to each of these sections and work it in to create your colored play dough.
Next, split the remaining white play dough into either 6 or 8 sections, again depending on how many colors you have, and flatten them out until they look like a pancake.
Then, take one of your play dough colors, roll it into a ball and place it in the middle of your play dough pancake.
Finally, wrap it up so that you completely enclose the colored play dough inside and have a big ball of white play dough on the outside.
Repeat with the rest of your colors until they’re all hidden inside balls of white play dough.
Smashing this color surprise play dough and squishing it until the colors are combined is not only a fantastic fine motor workout, but your preschoolers are going to love the excitement of finding out what color is inside.
As soon as I handed over a ball of white play dough, miss 4 would grab and smash, excited to find out what color was inside.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen her have quite this much fun with a batch of homemade play dough before and believe me, we’ve made our fair share.
She has always been my play dough child and will jump at any chance to spend hours molding and building, but this, this was a love of play dough on a whole new level.
Give it a try. You won’t be disappointed!
