Best Homemade Play Dough

You have probably already seen that “two ingredient play dough” recipe floating around. If you haven’t, don’t worry, I’m going to give it to you. If you have, I have some tips to make the experience fun and successful for you and your kiddos.

I found this recipe from Discover, Play, Learn.

Best Homemade Play Dough

1 1/2 cups cornstarch

1 cup conditioner

BEFORE YOU START:

Take off any jewelry and/or rings. You do not want to have to clean them out later.

Prepare to get messy.

I made my play dough with a 2 year old (and even let my 10 month old try), so I chose to do the mixing and the food coloring myself. I let Ellie pour the ingredients in the bowl and watch me closely as I kneaded.

NOW LET’S START:

Combine the ingredients in a bowl and knead to combine.

It will be super messy. The cornstarch fluffs up everywhere as you knead, so knead with caution. Like homemade frosting, I find that the recipe will need a little tweaking. The first time I made this I used a really nice conditioner (because I had it laying around), so the measurements were perfect. The second time I used Suave conditioner, which wasn’t as thick, so I had to add a bit more cornstarch.

You will know that your measurements are perfect when the play dough no longer sticks in clumps to your hands. I followed this recipe exactly and then shook bits of cornstarch in the bowl until it stopped being so sticky.

The more you knead the softer it gets.

GET IT PERFECT

I noticed after we started playing that the play dough was a little runny, so I added pinches of cornstarch and re-kneaded until it thickened.

You could do the opposite if it was too hard, add more conditioner.

MAKE IT FUN

Add food coloring and/or glitter. Ellie wanted two colors, so I cut the lump of play dough in half to make two balls. I added 10 drops of color to each ball to get a nice light coloring. Knead until color is evenly combined in the play dough. (I did this myself because my hands were covered in color after kneading).

I just added glitter until Ellie said it was enough. I used a white glitter, which ended up being hard to see. A rainbow or darker glitter might have been nicer.

We used spiked bouncy balls, cookie cutters, and play dough molds to add a little fun.

You could definitely add learning elements: make and name shapes, form letters, make animals, stick toothpicks and plastic silverware in the play dough, find items with different patterns to make in the play dough and talk about patterns, sing songs like “Pat-a-cake,” and look at this post by learning4kids.net with all kinds of play dough learning activities.

Do you have a favorite play dough recipe?