The Potting Shed Playdough

My gardening bug has extended into playdough play. Behold, the worst playdough I have ever made. It was supposed to be 'soil' playdough, but I couldn't for the life of me make brown. I ended up with a khaki green colour and because of all the food colouring I added to try and make brown it was too watery so I had to add extra flour but then it was too crumbly. Not that the girls complained!

To the 'soil' playdough play I added some clean plant pots, lollipop sticks, glass beads, pea seeds and a pen. Poppet set about filling up the pots and putting the 'seeds' in and even labelling the sticks - she was giving me the finished pots and telling me who they were for - one was for daddy, one for her little sister and the others were for little friends she has made at playgroup. 

They've been playing with it for a few weeks now. It's dried out a bit and has quite a lot of peas and pen ink in it. Little was a bit too fond of putting the glass beads into her mouth so these have been taken away now to remove the temptation.

For a change I gave her the playdough with magnetic numbers and she really enjoyed pressing all of the numbers into the playdough and then carefully removing them all again and putting them back into the tub. Very methodical. When she was done she went into the cupboard to retrieve the much-loved glass beads and a cocktail umbrella and stuck them in too. She was concentrating so hard with her tongue poking out! Unfortunately after a while the glass beads went into the mouth again and had to be removed from the play. I'm amazed at how much use this terrible coloured and textured playdough has gotten! Hopefully the next batch will be a lot nicer.

Poppet: 3yrs

Little: 20 mos

Vanilla Sponge Cake Playdough

Play dough ingredients

We have a proper kitchen again! It has been quite a while let me tell you. But all the upheaval has made us appreciate all the more our lovely fully-functioning kitchen and our lives have gotten about 100 times easier these past couple of weeks as our house turns back from building site to a home. The girls have especially delighted in their regained freedom and have been tearing the place up. Little had been growing so very frustrated at not being allowed to explore all those dangerous and interesting looking tools that were lying around and wanted to be wherever the action was. She has been like a different little girl since being allowed to explore her surroundings again. And Poppet was a case in point as to why too much TV is not good for little ones! The tantrums we had when we switched it off were quite spectacular. It took a couple of days for her to stop asking for us to put a DVD on but now she doesn't even ask and has even napped in the afternoon a few times which she hasn't done in a long time. She's been asking instead to do 'painting' or 'make a cake'- apparently it has been Little's birthday a lot.

So this week we have been in the kitchen baking lots as we (I!) have missed this particular activity. Vanilla sponge cakes are one of our favourites because they are so easy. On Friday Poppet asked for play dough so I thought we would try for some vanilla-scented cake mixture type play dough. To make it I added in some vanilla extract and a touch of yellow food colouring at the kneading stage. It made the most wonderful sweet smelling dough. Play dough is lovely and tactile when played with while still warm and the girls were very keen to get stuck in. Poppet was curious as to the scent "mum what that smell like?" I was looking around for some bits and bobs to add to the play dough play and Poppet was helping me - she went into a drawer and picked out some food picks and I got some candles and cake cases which are always popular with playdough play.  Poppet got some lovely new wooden play dough utensils for her birthday so we used them too.

Little loved sticking the food picks and candles into her playdough and trying to roll it out and stamp shapes into it. She just tries to copy anything she sees her big sister do. Poppet made imprints in hers and rolled them up to make 'sausages' which were then put into cake cases and allocated to family members according to size.

It was 20 whole minutes before the inevitable happened and Little ate a piece. Poppet alerted me to the fact, looking at her sister disdainfully but with a certain amount of admiration. She had swallowed it and everything by the time I got to her but really did not enjoy the taste (salty!) so I hope that she will have learnt her lesson. I was a bit worried about the salt content so gave her a cup of water and she certainly seemed really thirsty!  I have been trying to encourage her to smell playdough not eat it so she now does an exaggerated smelling action whenever she sees it.

Poppet: 3yrs 2mos

Little: 17 mos

Monster Playdough

This was more halloween based fun and a really easy activity that kept Poppet happy for ages. Instead of monsters another idea would be to make playdough spiders. 

For this activity I put out the halloween playdough that we made recently along with some pipe cleaners, feathers and goggly eyes. Goggly eyes are one of Poppet's favourite crafting supplies, she just loves them and they are really cute.

Mummy Monster

The first monster she created was a 'mummy' one and this was followed by a 'daddy' one and then two cute little baby ones. It is funny how she always exactly replicates our family unit!  Poppet is very methodical with her goggly eye use now - she makes sure she picks two eyes the same size for each face, and is careful to give the babies little eyes and the adults big eyes (with the daddy having the biggest eyes and the mummy slightly smaller ones). She refused point blank to add a third eye on to any of her monsters, no thanks, I'm not falling for that one mum.

Daddy Monster

She stuck feathers in and declared that they were wings and her monsters could fly. She chose to use the pipe cleaners as mouths.  For the baby monsters she very carefully selected the very smallest feathers. It was also very important that the babies were given 'cots' and 'highchairs'.

Baby Monsters 

I found it interesting to compare Poppet's monsters to one she created much earlier in the year; she was much less strict with her eye usage back then! This particular monster had three eyes (third one is at the back) and two lollipop stick arms on top of his head.

Poppet: 2 yrs 9 mos

Little: 1yr

Halloween Playdough

I think this may be the pinnacle of our playdough making! We made a batch of clove scented playdough using our usual recipe from The Imagination Tree, and then divided it into two balls. We coloured one orange (using red and yellow food colouring) and the other black and added some silver glitter as well. As usual I had to use a lot of food colouring. I have since read that some people use a squirt of a washable ready-made paint and that gives more vibrant colours so I think I will give that a try next time.

The smell of cloves was amazing (we just sprinkled ground cloves into the playdough mixture till it smelled right), very autumnal and warming. Perfect for playing with on crisp autumn days!

The resultant playdough, still warm and fresh from the bowl, enticed Poppet to play with it as soon as I put it out. It was really pliable and aromatic and I think she really liked having more than one colour to work with. 

I paired the playdough with a selection of our autumn treasures - acorns, sycamore seeds, pinecones, and leaves - and also put out a little bowl of whole cloves and some playdough utensils.

She used the lumps of playdough to stand up the twigs in to make little trees, so I showed her how to use balls of playdough to make the tree bigger and taller, adding in more branches. She really likes using the 'knife' and happily cut away at the playdough for ages (although insisted on using the knife upside down).

She experimented with making imprints in the playdough with the acorns and cones and seeing the shapes that they left behind. She was calling the acorn's cupules 'hats' and liked standing the acorns up in the playdough and then making sure they had a hat on. 

I thought to give her our recently decorated peg people, so we added them to our play and she had great fun fitting them all with their hats.

Grandad came in from working outside and assisted by showing Poppet that she could use little lumps of playdough to secure the hats to the heads.

Hatted people having a chinwag

The people had to have beds, of course, so Poppet tasked Grandad, Daddy and me with each making a bed for them. We all produced a bed, some more inventive, realistic and well just better than others but I won't name any names. All I will say is Poppet picked mine as the best and it had detachable covers and a pillow.

It was too hard to resist playing with the playdough and I also created a little garden and then a pumpkin which Poppet loved and insisted I made another. All afternoon she treasured those pumpkins along with the bed that I had made her.

They were all placed very carefully in her play kitchen cupboard and she was very insistent that I didn't put them away "Don't tidy this one mum. I love it mum. Don't tidy it up. I love it. Just look. Just leave it here. Don't tidy that up. I love it." She is at a stage just now where she declares her love for quite a lot of things!

Poppet's beloved objects. Please note the bed looked better when I first made it!

I am sorry to say that Grandad and Daddy's interpretations of a bed were placed in her other kitchen cupboard and I was given permission to tidy these up if I so wished.

This has been by far Poppet's favourite playdough and she has asked for it out to play more than any other I have made. I'm looking forward to making some Christmassy flavours in a few weeks!

Poppet: 2 yrs 9 mos

Little: 1yr

Loose Parts Play with Playdough

I have been doing some reading recently on the benefits of giving children the opportunity to have free play with loose parts and trying to incorporate it more into our days. Loose parts basically means any small bits and bobs, such as feathers, marbles, lollypop sticks, pine cones, shells etc... There is a great article on Nurture Store that outlines the benefits of free play with loose parts and has a free downloadable print-out with ideas of things you can use; I have it up on the wall to give me inspiration for what to get out.

On this occasion we made a new batch of playdough  (it was meant to be hot pink but I haven't got the hang of colouring yet and it was more dusky pink), and then I put it out along with a bowl of lavender flowers, some lollipop sticks, cocktail stick umbrellas, some wooden 'people', a few playdough utensils and some magnetic numbers (a blatant attempt to make this activity educational).

Things that can be sprinkled are always well-received, so Poppet had a great time sprinkling the lavender flowers into the playdough making it smell lovely.

She was very careful about rolling it out and even placed the rolling pin underneath it to try and lift it, something she has seen me do when rolling out pastry. I sometimes forget that they are always watching and learning!

I am guessing that playdough can get a bit boring with the same old utensils every time so it helped Poppet to see it in a new light with a new set of loose parts to explore. She loved standing the umbrellas up in the playdough and sprinking the lavender the most. In hindsight I probably gave her too many loose parts so in future will limit that - the lollypop sticks and numbers weren't even touched. The Nurture Store talks of a 'Magic Three Formula', i.e. using 3 different types of loose parts, which sounds about right.

Poppet: 2 yrs 8 mos

Little: 1yr

When Life Gives You Playdough Lemons

I've been going through a bit of a homemade lemonade phase recently, it's the perfect drink for this scorching hot weather we've been having - ice cold, refreshing, sweet, sour and just a tiny bit salty. I'm addicted. And Poppet has been avidly watching me squeeze lemon after lemon in our lemon squeezer, pleading to have a go. Helping me pour it through the sieve. Picking out stray pips. Mixing in the sugar. She loves the whole process (and the end result even more!). 

To let her have a go at making it herself without running the risk of squirting herself in the eye with lemon juice (been there, done that), I set up an invitation to play using playdough lemons and my lemonade making equipment. We scented the playdough using lemon essence so it releases a lovely lemony smell as you play with it.

We made a batch of 4 minute no-cook playdough together using this recipe, adding yellow food colouring and lemon essence to the boiling water. And adding more food colouring and lemon essence at the kneading stage too as it wasn't quite lemony enough. It would have been good to add some lemon zest to it as well but I didn't think of it at the time.  It was particularly good playdough, really soft and mouldable. If you haven't tried making playdough yet I would urge you to give it a go, it's 100 times better than the shop bought stuff. Although the colours sometimes aren't as vivid, you can play about with scents and textures which makes it more than worth it.

I moulded it into lemon-like shapes and put them into a bowl along with a real lemon so she would get the idea. I also put other lemonade-making paraphernalia on the tray - juicers, a jug, cups, straws, a little sieve and a knife. 

First she tried to cut the real lemon but soon transferred her attention to the playdough ones and got into the swing of it. She loved the lemon squeezer and the playdough was so soft it oozed out in long strands really easily. This was a good activity for strengthening up her hand muscles which helps get them ready for pencil control later on. This is a really great post on all the benefits of playing with playdough.

She loved cutting up all the lemons and then squishing them through the squeezer, collecting the long strands in her jug to make her 'lemonade'.

She also liked pressing the lemon halves into the lemon juicer and seeing the imprints it left behind on the playdough. Afterwards she had some more fun with making imprints using her magnetic letter set, pressing the numbers in and then picking them out again to see the shape they left behind.

Playdough & Pasta Sculptures

I saw this post on The Imagination Tree and I thought it was a clever way of using spaghetti, so I put a similar thing out when I needed a quiet activity to calm Poppet down post temper-tantrum while I got on with making tea. We didn't have beads but I have a bag of penne pasta I keep specifically for playdough play so used that instead.



It was the perfect activity to keep her engrossed and she concentrated very hard on threading each bit on. She liked putting the maximum number of penne pasta pieces possible onto each strand of spaghetti (there is a lot of alliteration in that sentence).



It's definitely an activity I will be pulling out again in a tantrum related emergency!

Glittery Play Dough Fairy Cakes

One of Poppet's favourite ways to play with play dough and guaranteed to keep her occupied for a wee while so that I can sit and have a cup of tea finally unpack that suitcase that has been sitting there since Monday.

I gave her pink (ish) raspberry scented playdough, a couple of playdough knives, candles, heart shaped silicone fairy cake cases, a bun tray, biscuit cutters, silver glitter, and my rolling pin ( I have tried to use her little one and it is rubbish, you can't roll the dough out very easily with those little ones so I just give her mine, she gets on much better with it).

Obviously the glitter was very quickly poured out and copious amounts sprinkled about. She attempted to fold the dough over and knead the glitter in like she has seen me do before which I thought was clever.

Then it was over to the important task of cutting out the cakes. She is very pleased with herself that she can manage this by herself now (unless it is a particularly thick wedge of playdough in which case I am needed to assist). She knows to wiggle the cutter about to cut right through to the bottom.

Once her cakes were done, she realised her bun tray was too big to fit into her play oven so insisted that I put them in my oven instead. The addition of glitter to the playdough cake play definitely went down well although she does still have glitter on her scalp despite me washing her hair. And our bath is a bit glittery.

Poppet: 2yrs 4mos

Little: 8 mos

Playdough Spiders

Poppet has a thing for spiders just now. She is constantly pointing out "inchy spiders!" to me which gives me a little panic until I discover it is actually a fly she can see. Then there was the incident with the massive spider we discovered in the bathroom that I bravely captured. I set it down in a plastic tub at the top of the stairs, ready to set free outside once we were dressed. I was busy dressing Little, then came out of my bedroom to be greeted by an empty tub and a gleeful Poppet, proudly informing me that "Inchy Spider" was in her bedroom now. He never was found. So with her love of spiders in mind I set out an invitation to play with playdough spiders. There was playdough, goggly eyes and pipe cleaners, plus one spider that I made earlier.

She started off by getting the spider to crawl all over her little sister.

Of course all this had to be done while 'Inchy Winchy Spider' was playing in the background on a loop. That wasn't annoying at all.

She starting trying to make a spider of her own. Apparently this was mummy spider. We talked about how many legs spiders have. She still counts "1,2,3,4,9"! We also then had to make a daddy spider.

We made a water spout from some toilet tubes secured with playdough. The spiders each had a turn dutifully climbing up then being washed out in time with the song. She had a great time.

Poppet: 2yrs 4 mos
Little: 7 mos