Homemade Playdough

Aishah was down with chicken pox, so I wanted to do an activity that can involve her right from its preparation, and the end result can be used again and again. Playdough seemed to fit the picture nicely.

Previously, I always get frustrated when the girls leave our shop-bought playdough lying around uncovered after playing, resulting in them becoming hardened and had to be thrown-away. I've always been thinking about making a homemade playdough, but what hindered me was the 'cream of tartar' ingredient that I always saw as one of the ingredient for playdough making. One day I finally spotted it at the local baking shop, and excitedly bought it for my playdough mission :)

Here's the (alleged) fail proof playdough recipe that I used, found at the www.learnplayimagine.com website:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• some food colouring

Mr. Hubby was at home at the time, so I let him spend some quality time with the girls by making the first batch of playdough. His was blue.

Once it was done, the girls wanted to play with it immediately. Aishah made 'ummi, baba, aishah & maryam', as you can see in the picture below.

Ummi made the second batch, pink playdough (it's hard to make a real red although you're using red food colouring. It will still turn out pink!). But no picture this time, too busy working!

The girls spent quite a significant amount of time playing with the playdough until they were tired of it. Ummi kept the playdoughs securely in zip-lock bags, making sure they were airtight.

The next morning, Aishah again demanded to play with the playdoughs. I took them out, and found the textures to be even better than the day before! I had previously bought some alphabet cookie cutters from Mr. D.I.Y., so I took them out and let Aishah form the letters of her name by herself.

Some letters were tricky though, as the openings to push the dough out were too narrow. Even I myself was struggling to do it.

Day-3 came, and the playdough was still good to play. This time, I took out all the cookie cutters and playdough moulds that I have and let the girls use them. Aishah used all of them, and proudly lined up her collection:

Unfortunately, by day-4, I took out the playdoughs only to find that they were already sticky and no longer fit for playing. Although a bit disappointed (I had hoped the playdough to last at least for a month!), I was also a bit relieved as I was starting to get tired of cleaning up the mess after each playdough playing sessions :P

I will definitely be making more batches of playdough in the future, but using another recipe that I can find in the internet. Hope they will last longer next time, insha Allah! :)