Homemade Playdough

My sister-in-law made Josh some homemade play dough a month or so ago and gave me the recipe.  I had been thinking about making some as it is another teaching idea I've see alot on blog land.  So, here's an easy recipe! (I know there are about a million differant recipes out there - they all seem to have the same basic ingredients, the measurments just change slightly . .)

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons cream of tarter
1 Tablespoon oil
food coloring or 1 packet unsweeted kool-aid
Flavoring (peppermint, almond, lemon, ect)

Mix everything together and heat on medium until the play dough pulls away from the sides

This is what it looks like mixed up.  Because we are doing a winter unit - I wanted white play dough so I did not add any coloring.  Instead, I added some silver glitter.

Do not walk away from this - it pulled away from the sides in about 2 minutes.

After letting it cool enough to handle, knead it a little and store it in an air tight container

And here are some pictures of us playing with it this week :-)

Josh was not a fan of the texture of the playdough - I had to "smoosh" it out for him.

He liked to take the cookie cutters and place them on top of the already cut out shape.

Notice the one figure technique?  That is so he wouldn't touch the play dough!

 I want to share one other learning game we play right now and it is :

Yep, Wheel of Fortune!  It comes on at the start of Bath time so we pause the TV.  See, the other night, Josh and I were watching it and every time a letter was turned he would say "T", or "R" - reading the letters.  So now, we practice our letter sounds while watching this game show.  How fun is that???  Darryl and I commented how we both watched this growing up (along with Jeopardy) and now, we are back to watching it again.  And yes, we do watch Jeopardy too!

And one more fun learning idea :

That's right, folks, Tater Tots!  I saw these a few weeks ago while grocery shopping and since I had planned fries to go with lunch one day, I bought these instead.  (My boys LOVE Tater Tots anyway!)  We used them to practice letters before eating them.  Eventually we will do things like spell out their names, and write other words too!  How fun - eating and learning :-)