Need a super fun activity to occupy those kiddos on a “boring” summer day. Moon or Cloud dough is your answer! This is so quick and easy, and will thrill your kids to pieces. This stuff is made with two simple household ingredients – all you need to do is mix and start playing! It has a fabulously fun texture that makes it a sensory experience for your kids. It crumbles, sifts, and separates, but can also be packed, patted and made into shapes and structures too. It’s gonna get messy, so be prepared. But the messiest days at our house are often the most fun! I recommend doing this outdoors where the kids can go crazy constructing, playing, and creating without worrying about the mess.
This was one of the projects on last years summer fun list. Of all of our activities last summer, I think this one was the favorite. The kids played with it for hours and days there after too. There are a few versions of this moon dough (also called cloud dough) out there, but here is what we used to get this fun substance to play with.
I totally recommend making a big batch (starting with the 2 cups of flour) or maybe even doubling that if you have more than one child that wants to play with it. The kids had so much fun with this and couldn’t get enough of it! Get a nice big plastic container and add the flour first. Then slowly add the baby oil to the center a little at a time, mixing it in with your hand. The flour should start getting a little more dense and you should be able to pack it into shapes with your hands. The consistency is up to you. Just add the baby oil until you like the way it feels. Then get busy playing with your kids! I have heard that you can use regular cooking oil, and add nice smells and extracts, but we kept it as simple as possible,and that worked for us.
We collected a bunch of little tiny toys, shovels, spoons, and objects to play with in our moon dough. Play dough tools work great too, for making shapes, objects, and for getting creative.
We sat down at the kid’s plastic picnic table outside and played with this stuff for hours. It completely consumed an afternoon and I had some very happy kids on my hands. I even enjoyed playing with this stuff with them! We created all sorts of fun little games and activities to play using the moon dough.
The kids favorite thing to do was play “archeologist”. They would turn around and I would bury some little animals in the moon dough. Then they would get busy using a little brush and some other tools to explore, find, and uncover the surprises that I had hid.
It made a great base for a fun game of animal tic-tact-toe with my older son and so much more!
Great busy fun for the kids and a super fun way to make an ordinary summer day delightfully exciting. Who would have thought that these two household ingredients could make such a fun activity for the kids? So grab some baby oil and a bag of flour, and whip up a batch – you will not be disappointed, and your kids won’t either!