Make And Play With Halloween Colored Playdough

I am always looking for ways to make our normal play extra exciting for the kids.  Halloween is the perfect time to turn normal craft and play times into holiday fun and excitement.  We love playing play dough in our house.  I haven’t purchased play dough from the store for  a couple of years, and instead we make it at home.  Making homemade play dough  is cheap, easy and  a great way to get the kids in the kitchen.  Making it in fun festive colors turns it into the perfect Holiday activity for kids.

I love making play dough at home with the kids for a few reasons.

1.  When we run out of dough and the kids drag out the basket of tools ready to play I can whip up a fresh batch in minutes.

2.  I usually have everything that I need to make it in the pantry at home

3.  The kid’s love making it with me and choosing the colors.

It is a fun activity in itself to make the play dough and always keeps them busy for hours afterward.  Last Christmas we made sparkly snow play dough, which they have enjoyed all year long.  Something about making it extra special for the holiday season got them really excited about playing with the play dough each time we got it out.  Since we were running low on play dough I decided that we should make a fresh batch and using food coloring we created some vibrant Halloween colors for spooky fun play time with our play dough tools.  This is my favorite play dough recipe tat I have tried so far and the same one that I used for the snow play dough last winter.

I always make two batches of dough at a time.  I make two  separate batches of this recipe at the same time (in separate pots).  That way when we are done we have two different colors and enough play dough for the  kids to share.

Ingredients

• 1 C. Flour
• 1/2 C. Salt
• 2 tbsp. Oil
• 2 tsp. Cream of Tartar
• 1 C. Water
• Black and orange food coloring ( I used Wilton cake decorating food coloring for vibrant colors)

Instructions

1. Heat oil in a pot on the stove top. Remove the pot from the heat. Add in water and food coloring.  Stir in flour, salt, and cream of tartar. Cook on low heat until mixture is firm (4-5 minutes). Remove from heat and put dough on wax paper to cool.
2. Store in a Ziploc bag or other airtight container

Once you make this you can store it in an airtight container or Ziploc bag so your kids can play day after day.

They had a great time creating Halloween type characters from their colorful play dough.  We used some Halloween cookie cutters to make jack-o-lanterns and also made witches hats, black cats, and monsters.  If you are out of play dough at home this is a great to make enough to last a good long time and to make it extra special for any holiday.  Green and red for Christmas, red and pink for valentines day, whatever fits the season!