Homemade Rainbow Glitter Playdough and Stencils

Last week Grammy was here for a visit, and, Masha' Allah, brought me some consignment sale goodies, one of which was a box of stencils. I had been wanting to do a craft I saw on an Early Childhood sight I follow, that incorporates playdough and stencils, so we got right to work on it the next morning. You can find the activity here:

 http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/play-doh-and-stencils/

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Stencils

We have the stencils pictured in the blog post, but we used the ones Grammy brought instead and this set was the main reason:

The picture and the words are together, great reinforcement for our 'early readers' Masha' Allah. 

However, the box contained a variety of fun stencils:

Even the lid could be used as one

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Rainbow Glitter Playdough

For this activity I wanted to use homemade playdough, since the stencils were rather large, and we don't have large amounts of jarred playdough. I went to our favorite 'Snow' playdough recipe and doubled it, but swapped out the silver glitter for Red, Orange, Gold, Green, Blue and Violet glitter. I put the glitter in three separate layers of the playdough mix to ensure lots of sparkles

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Getting Started

Masha' Allah, everyone was happy to see warm, homemade playdough on the table, and wasted no time getting work. 

Masha Allah, with the help and supervision of Mommy, and Grammy, even Baby Professor joined in

He enjoyed himself, and only tried to sneak a bite of playdough once. 

Everyone else hard at work Masha' Allah

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Prints

One of the main ideas behind the original activity was to help with word recognition and spelling. Here are some of the prints we made with the word and picture sentcils

Masha' Allah, we really enjoyed this activity, and I was impressed with how the playdough turned out. The playdough container has been out in the school room on and off since we made it, and Professor #3 is still having a ball with it well into the weekend.

Mango Jello Playdough

After weeks of anticipation, we finally made our Jello playdough! We didn't have the 3 batch bash I had originally planned, but we had just as much fun, maybe more, since Grammy was here on a visit and able to join in the play.

Over the Summer my Mom had requested Strawberry Jello from the Muslim Market near our home (we can't use conventional Gelatin) to make a cake. While there, my dh picked up some other flavors that we were not able to use in the cake, and were not going to eat since the Professors don't like Jello. Alhumdullilah, a few months ago our friends, the Lueker girls had pinned this recipe http://www.playdoughrecipe.org/playdough-recipes/jello-playdough-recipe to their Homeschool Playdough Pintrest board, and I had finally found a purpose for our Jello!

We had a few different flavors to choose from, but Professor #2 spotted the box in the kitchen, and was hooked on having  'orange playdough', so Mango it was!

The instructions in the recipe claimed that this playdough was harder to make than traditional homemade playdoughs, so I got all nervous about it, ultimately for no reason, but I took a few pictures of the process in case it didn't make it. 

Mixing all the dry ingredients.

Adding the warm water. Ready to cook. 

I will admit it did take longer to cook the playdough. I started out on medium heat ( I have an electric stove) and gradually turned it down to low, medium heat. The playdough was runny, and was all over the pan, and took much longer to get consistency. Being paranoid I took it out a little earlier than I normally have, thinking I would kneed in extra flour once it cooled. The recipe calls for it to be cooled on wax paper, but disposable aluminum pans work fine. Just dust with a little flour if you want.

Finished Product 

The playdough turned out fine, Alhumdullilah, and was Masha' Allah nice and soft and warm, and kneeded easily with a small hand full of flour. I also dusted my hands with flour. I have to say the only thing that didn't pan out was the scent! It smelled incredible while mixing, but as it cooked the smell faded away, and the floury, dough smell took its place. I guess we'll have to wait for the Kool Aid playdough for that effect.  It did give a great orange/yellow color, much better than using straight food coloring, as for health reasons we avoid that as much as we can around here.

Since we made this when Grammy was here visiting, she requested a batch of Snow Playdough, her favorite, and we happily obliged. I felt like a Playdough expert making that after all the anxiety of making the Jello playdough, lol Masha' Allah. 

Our Snow Playdough for Grammy, and our Mango Jello Playdough, Masha' Allah,  nice and warm and ready for play!

Snow Playdough

 Mango Jello Playdough

Getting down to buisness, Masha' Allah : )

Rolling seemed to be the theme of the session. Masha' Allah, the Professors rolled all these out themselves and have really improved using the rolling pins.

Here is Grammy rolling out some of her Snow Playdough, while explaining to the Professors, that this is just how she makes her sugar cookies at home. 

Grammy was concerned that the Professors might mix the Playdough, so we divided up the playdough so each person had two balls of each color. Mix away they did, and when the session was over we ended up with this

Grammy even found some old Galaxy Playdough stuck inside one of the playdough manipulatives. Surprisingly,  still very soft.

Masha' Allah we had an awesome session, and I'm so relived the playdough was not nearly as hard to make as it was preceived to be. We'll be taking a break now from MYO playdough as this activity has waned with the Professors. I still have many more on my list I want to try including, Kool Aid and Lavander, and can't wait to get back to making it again soon, insha' Allah! Hope you enjoyed following us on our MYO playdough journey!