Playdough

A while back, we made playdough.

It was a cold, rainy week. Unable to go to the park, we spent our mornings, reading and playing Playdoh (yes, the commercial pack). The kids both play but in different ways.

Ae is contented to roll and shape the dough on her own. She makes worms mostly and birds, turtles, other animals that take the shape of worms.

Ew directs me to make him things. Roll it into a ball. When I make interesting objects like tadpoles, he conjures up stories about them. He wants to keep them, they become his pets. (I squash his pets when he is not looking and bury them in the canisters according to their colour.)

We take playdough one step further with our homemade version.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 tablespoon oil
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
Food colouring

Mix all the ingredients together except the food colouring. Cook it over the stove until the dough leaves the sides of the pot. Try rolling it. If it is too sticky, keep cooking until it feel right. Take it off the heat. When it is cool enough to handle, divide the dough into portions. Add food colouring and knead until the colour is evenly distributed. I only have red colouring so we had 3 colours -  plain, pink and dark pink playdough.

The volume of it makes it more entertaining and interesting than the commercial stuff. Imagine sinking your hands into huge lumps dough, stomping your foot into it, making giant what-evers. We made giant earthworms, giant tadpoles, a birthday cake. We rolled it out flat and made imprints of hands, feet, peanuts, fishes (plastic ones). Squishing on it with all one's might is pretty therapeutic too.

Unfortunately, the playdough became really sticky the next day - impossible to mould without making a mess. I tried keeping it in the fridge but when the fridge was accidentally turned off. I threw it away with the rest of the spoils. I learned later that in places where humidity is high (like rainy Taipei), the dough absorbs moisture from the air and becomes sticky. Cooking it over heat again will make it fine again. I'll keep that tip for the next time. Another idea I like to try is using natural dyes to colour the dough like turmeric, beetroot.

The playdough idea is from Instructables which I think is a really cool website for fun things to do with kids.