Homemade Playdoh- looks and smells yummy!

Ok, so everyone loves Playdoh. But, having a 3 year old- I just find harden bits on the carpet or those little tubs with no lid. Grr.

As a teacher, I did have a playdoh recipe somewhere that was my mom's (she was a teacher for 30 years!). But, having taught intermediate kids (gr 7 and 8) and now high school, I just was out of touch with homemade playdoh.

So I noticed something on Pinterest that someone else had pinned: THIS:

Which led me to this website: Playdoh Recipe

I read the recipe: Seemed straight forward. Loved that the colour came from jello, and not food colouring (that I inevitably will have all over my hands for days).

I had most of the ingredients, except the weird Cream of Tartar.

$2.99. We used the whole thing for 5 batches. 2 tbsp per batch.

ALWAYS USE CREAM OF TARTAR.  Please don't ask why, just buy it.


Oh, and I thought I had jello, but it turned out to be fat free pudding.
No worries! I read the comments and saw that people used Kool Aid (the cheap ones that you add sugar to that I never buy or use- too much work). I remembered I had some from somewhere! I found them.
Thirty cents a pack.

I gathered up my materials:

(You don't need a photo of salt, oil, flour- do you?)

My little helper. We made a BATCH for every colour we wanted.

Birthday boy.

Put everything in the pot. That's it. Even a 3 year old can do that.

The messy goo.

Ok, so the one MAJOR problem with the recipe on the website above is the LACK OF INSTRUCTIONS. Nowhere does it say to cook it! Hello? Thank goodness I read all the comments below where another wonderful poster had posted the same thing. So I put it on the stove, medium heat. Some of the batches I watched and stirred, the batch above, I forgot about it. Oops. Here is the result:



Do NOT leave the pan. Ok, well it came off pretty easily with hot water.



Once you cook it and stir, this is what it looks like. It looks oily and wet- and it is. I set it on foil and waited a while. It gets less gooey and supersoft! Love the vibrant colours. It does smell yummy for a little while. And if your kid decides to try and eat it, it tastes awful (yes, I tried).

We used all the colours we had!



Remember to knead it so you dont have weird clumps (like mine!)



All ready to go. Will last a long time if you actually keep it in the ziplocs!

I put each in a ziploc bag. As an activity, we used dollar store stampers to make impressions in the playdoh. We also used hard placemats (not pictured) to use as a table to we could sit on the floor. And it DOESN'T come off on your hands- no matter how many times we checked!



Why don't you try it?