Play Dough

I've got a bit bored with the playdough colours that we get using the food colouring available at the supermarket, so I've been experimenting a bit over the last couple of weeks. 

The children spotted blackberries on the way back from school the other day and had great fun picking them.  As they were on a busy main road, I wasn't keen for the children to eat them but inspired by this post at Minieco I thought I could use them to dye the playdough.

I boiled them up in some water, squeezed them through a strainer and then used the water to make playdough.

The blackberries made a lovely vibrant pink colour, that I had never achieved before with the supermarket  food colouring (photo doesn't really depict the colour)

I then tried beetroot, boiling it up in the same way and got a very similiar pink colour.  I think I may have got a deeper colour if I'd boiled the beetroot for a bit longer, but I was too impatient to see the colour it would create:)  Ok, so I'd made a lovely pink, but I wanted other vibrant colours.  It then occured to me that maybe the colours used in cake decorating would create better result.   So I got both powdered and liquid colouring from a local cake making shop and experimented. 

I was very impressed with the results - again the photo doesn't really depict the colours (the playdough coloured with beetroot is in the bottom right corner).

Although these were quite expensive, approx £3 for a little bottle or pot, in the long run they would work out much cheaper as I needed very little to create deep vibrant colours.  I literally dipped the wrong end of a spoon into the pot and this was all I needed to create these colours.  The liquid form worked much better than the powder and there were lots and lots of colour shades to choose from.

I found the food colouring worked equally well on rice!

I going to try pasta next! (a tip for dying pasta - put a few drops of hand sanitising gel into the bag when colouring.   The alcohol in it seems to break down the surface of the pasta, allowing the colour to be absorbed).

During my experimenting I ran out of cream of tartar.  I had always believed cream of tartar acted as a preservative in play dough,  so thought I would get away with using less as I didn't particularly need the playdough to last for long.   However I discovered that this isn't its only function!  It also prevents the dough becoming too sticky.  If you scrimp on the cream of tartar, you end up with playdough that is constantly sticky, no matter how much flour you add to the mix!

Other tips:

The more salt you add the stiffer the dough - great if you want a dough that holds its shape once manipulated.

Adding glycerine gives the dough a lovely sheen!

When making dough, mix the ingredients thoroughly to get rid of as many lumps as possible before cooking (alternatively put through a strainer) as this seems to make a much softer dough. 

At The Imagination Tree they added herbs to their dough, I can't wait to give that a try:)

Cloud Dough:))

This week our sensory activity has been Cloud Dough.  Be warned though, there is something a bit addictive about running your fingers through it that you might find it difficult to share it with your little ones!

For Cloud Dough you will only need:
8 cups of flour
1 cup of baby oil







Put the oil and flour into a bowl and mix together
with your hands.

Until you end up with a mixture that resembles
breadcrumbs.  That's it!

So what's so special about Cloud Dough?
Well it has a wonderfully soft texture (hence thename!) but has properties similar to that of wet sand. If you squeeze it together it can be formed into shapes but will then crumble apart again.

Like me, J was perfectly content to explore the dough with his hands.  Watching it fall from his fingers.

Scooping handfuls

Moulding it with his hands

Patting it.

Grabbing armfuls!

Squeezing the dough.

Reeeeaaaallly squeezing the dough - his expression was fantastic (great activity for relieving stress:))

Eventually we got round to adding some equipment to the tray.

We could then scoop and pour.

Fill and Empty

I did make some cloud dough castles, but J was intent on splatting them before I could take pictures!

WARNING: Can be quite messy so probably best to wear an apron!!

Links to EYFS:

PD: Using Equipment and Materials (using scoops, spoons etc to put the dough into containers)

CD: Exploring Media and Materials (exploring the dough with their hands and with the equipment)

Spaghetti Towers

We have been busy practising our threading skills this week.  All the children I look after enjoyed having a go at this activity, ranging in age from nearly 2, to 9.

Spaghetti, stood upright in playdough make a great frame for our threading.

I then gave the children pasta tubes, cut up straws, buttons and Cheerios to thread. 

The children were keen to join in and spend a long time selecting resources and threading them.

This little boy had fantastic concentration and threading skills considering  his age.

Others were keen to help him out at times, when he found it a bit tricky!

He even managed to simultaneously keep his balance on the stool he insisted on sitting on, whilst threading.  I think thats quite an achievement for a nearly 2 year old!

With the over 3's, to extend their learning, I drew their attention to the
 patterns the older children had made that morning and we worked hard to create our own.  Sometimes we had to say our pattern out loud to
work out what would come next.

And here are some of our creations.  Not sure how well they survived the journey home though!

I found some Pennoni Rigati pasta in Asda this morning which are huge compared to normal pasta tubes.  These, with straws, I thought would make a great version of this activity for even younger children.

 

Just need a bit of food colouring to make them more interesting!

Links to EYFS:

PSED: Making Relationships (working together and helping each other)

CLL: Handwriting (showing good control when positioning the straws / pasta on the spaghetti)
PSRN: Numbers as Labels and for Counting (counting / estimating how many objects have been threaded)

PSRN: Shape, Spaces, Measures ( Attempts at / recognition of patterns, ordering towers by height)