Is lockdown getting you down? Feels like groundhog day most days right? Especially with home-schooling.

This super quick playdough recipe is ideal. Making the playdough is an activity in itself, a bit like baking, but rather than eating the produce they get to play with it at the end.

What I’ve discovered is that this can be used in lots of home-schooling tasks too. So, for example if children are fed up of drawing and want to do something different, or if they have been asked to craft something and they aren’t big on gluing and sticking, let them make it out of playdough instead.

One of the children has the topic of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory at the moment and got totally fed up of the drawing tasks the other week, so we made playdough and then he created the sweet treats from the book out of playdough and we sent the image to school.

It’s just another option, rather than doing the same things over and over again. We all need a bit of variety at the moment don’t we!

What you need

3 cups of plain flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of cold water

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

2 tablespoons of corn starch (you can also use cornflour)

1 tablespoon of glycerine (optional – this makes it more stretchy)

Food colouring

Essential oils (optional)

Method

Mix all dry ingredients.

Add oil and glycerine and mix.

Add water slowly, mixing as you go and kneed (you may not need all the water so add slowly).

Kneed in essential oils if you are using those.

Divide into equal balls and then add food colouring as required – kneed well until the colour is spread equally.

For reference, the food colouring I use is Wilton Food Colouring Pots, I’ve used these for a while now for baking and things like playdough and I find the colours much better than the liquid food colouring bottles you find in the supermarkets.

Have fun!

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