Play Dough Saves the Day: Arts & Science Activity

Which kid does not love to play with play dough? Oh, I will tell you, my kids do! So much, that I prefer to make it at home to make sure that they get their hands on non-toxic ones, and to save my pocket, too! I started to make these since my two younger ones started to fall in love with play dough, but too young to be putting anything in their mouths.

Homemade Play Dough

I have shared a couple of recipes here, but those called for either salt or cream of tartar to make. This time, I tried to make a set with only all-purpose flour, cornstarch, and hot water.

What you have to do:

In a bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1/2 cup of cornstarch. Gradually add hot water and mix until you get a firm consistency.

Knead the dough until there are no more lumps, and it is stretchy. You can avail the services of your kids for the task-- I am sure they will love it! Be careful, the dough might be too hot to touch at first!

Even I found it so satisfying to knead and massage the dough.

"It feels like a stress ball, Mommy!" Little Miss commented.

Once the dough is properly kneaded, you can divide it in portions and put food coloring to it so you get multi-colored play dough. You'd want to wear gloves to protect your hands from the food coloring.

The Fossil Project

Initially, the plan was only to make fossils using the play dough, so I made mixed all the food coloring I have - blue, red, yellow, and green to achieve a brown colored play dough.

We have picked up some shells outside, and used some fish and chicken bones to make print fossils.

Fossils are very interesting to find and study. They are the hardened remains of a plant or animal that lived long ago. Fossils can also be an imprint of a once-living plant or animal.

For our activity, we pressed the "remains" of the animals (shells and bones) to replicate a mold fossil, which is a type of print fossils.

Mold fossils are found where sediments form around the a living thing and they eventually die and dissolve. Since the sediments already hardened when the organism dissolved, a hollow is created where the organism used to be. Most mold fossils found are shells, bones, or wood.

Some of the Fossils We Created

More Molding with the Play Dough

If you know my kids, you will be wondering how come they have not yet managed to "kill" each other. These two youngsters are only 17 months apart, so they would always clash and would always manage to annoy each other.

Thanks to these play dough, they were able to co-exist for two hours! Oh, what a sight! LOL. That also meant two hours straight peace and quiet in the household.

My Little Guy enjoyed his play dough so much, he even stuck them to his forehead. Oh cheeky little you! No worries for mommy though, as this play dough is entirely safe and food-grade.

The photo at the right is an attempt by Little Miss to "clay-molding", lol. It was eventually broken apart to be made into something nicer.

Little Miss suggested it was time we get more colors into our play dough since we were done with our fossil project.

She created these caterpillar, butterfly and flower.

Little Miss wanted to bake her creations, to make them hard. Nah, I did not want to bother turning the oven on. Besides, it was over 40 degrees Celsius outside, we have a super wide, free oven!