Playdough!

I love playdough!  It's probably because my mom made playdough often for us growing up.  I remember watching her knead the food coloring into the dough and hardly being able to wait for it to be cool so we could play.  I can't even imagine how many batches she must have made.  And, now I have already made over a hundred batches myself since Lainey has been born.  My kids love playdough...shaping it, imagining, cutting it with cookie cutters, stamping it, pounding, rolling...you name it.

After getting some wet snow last night, we opted not to go to the zoo and spend the afternoon making brand new batches of playdough and doing a few other fun things instead.  My friend, Alison, listed in her blog (mentioned in a previous post of mine) that she used Kool-Aid in her playdough.  So, I thought we would give that a try...and that was just enough of a twist to make the kids think this playdough was THE BEST EVER! :)  We spent the afternoon making 7 jumbo batches...because I will tell you, this recipe makes a pretty big batch.  If you're using food coloring, you could easily split your batch in half and knead two different colors into the separate halves depending on how many kiddos you have playing.

Here is the recipe my mom used over and over...as did many of my aunts...and now many of my cousins are using with their kids.  I hope you can enjoy it as much as we do!

Happy Playing!

Playdough

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup salt

1 T. alum

2 cups water

3 T. vegetable oil

food coloring or Kool-Aid packet

Mix together flour, salt and powdered alum.

Put the water, oil and food coloring/Kool-Aid (unless splitting batch and kneading food coloring into dough) in a saucepan.  Heat to boiling (or almost).  Add flour mixture and stir. Turn out on table and knead while still very warm.  

Store in the fridge in a ziplock bag, and it will keep quite awhile.  You can keep it at room temp also, but it won't keep quite as long....but still a long time.  :)

 The kids' creative space today.